


M.I.A.

by Dafaolta



Series: Served Cold [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-23 13:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 37,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3770083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dafaolta/pseuds/Dafaolta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver runs afoul of Moira's minions, who have ideas of their own about what they're due for services rendered. They're also about to find out how badass the Queen family truly is. Sequel to Served Cold, so Olicity! Posted originally on FF.net last year, but there may be some changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Felicity

The first three weeks of their engagement had passed blissfully. The party had been a huge success and the picture auction had raised a huge amount, surpassing even Thea's lofty expectations. And the paparazzi had been much less in evidence than they'd feared. It should have been a sign.

Isabel had seen the emerald, or as Felicity was beginning to think of it: The Emerald, and said nothing. She'd looked like she wanted to say something, but beyond the narrowed eye and clenched jaw, she let it pass. Felicity had waited until the woman left, but she'd done a happy dance at her desk while Oliver watched, smiling.

Oliver's public stance was that Felicity was his partner and she worked with him. End of story. He'd told Isabel, and the Board, and any random reporter who asked the same thing: 'she's the brains, I'm the brawn.' And people started taking them both more seriously.

It was Tuesday when it changed. Thea wanted her company during another planning session with the charity that had benefited from their engagement photos and party. Predictably, they ran late so Oliver had told Felicity just to go on to Verdant and he'd meet her there. Now it was well past 8:00pm and no one had heard from him.

Digg went back to QC to see what he could find out. Swearing under her breath, Felicity started tracking Oliver's phone. Or trying to, since there was no sign of it anywhere.

Checking into the security footage at QC had been an alarmingly frustrating exercise. The cameras in the garage had been tampered with as had several others like the elevators and areas on the executive levels. Oliver's key card had been used multiple times in those blacked out spaces and it took her precious minutes to get around the blocks left behind to discover that the cameras had been turned off at the source inside the security offices. Manually taken off line.

Felicity texted Digg with what she'd found and waited for him to respond, shivering. This should not, could not be happening. Not to them. Not again!

Digg's response: "I'm coming in," was enormously unreassuring. Felicity was pacing, chewing her lip, nearly in tears when the door in from Verdant opened. Watching Digg's face as he came slowly down the steps was heart-breaking.

She could feel the blood drain from her face as he walked towards her, holding a piece of paper. Thea, who was waving her hands and yelling something at Digg, followed only steps behind. Roy had been bringing up the rear in the parade, behind a worried Sara, but he was the one who saw Felicity begin to fold so he was the one who caught her before she skulled herself on the concrete floor.

He settled her in her chair and pushed her head between her knees. It was several moments before Felicity was able to track the argument still going on above her head. She looked up to see Thea right up in John's face, shaking her finger and shouting, while Sara and Roy looked on with matching looks of worry.

It took a couple of tries before Felicity could get enough air in her lungs to deploy her Loud Voice. "SOMEBODY had better tell me what the HELL is going on. Right NOW!" Four sets of shocked eyes turned her way.

Thea snatched the paper from John's hand and marched over to her. "He thinks Oliver wrote this," she said, her tone dripping disgust.

"Thea," John's voice was quiet and infinitely kind, "he's bailed before. After the quake he went back to Lian Yu. If we hadn't gone there after him, he'd probably still be there."

Felicity looked daggers at John for saying it out loud. Yes, Oliver had run away, but he'd had reasons anyone with a heart could have understood. She held out her hand to Thea and took the sheet of paper.

'I'm sorry, babe. I just can't do this. I know my timing sucks, but I have to get out of here. Please forgive me for abandoning you like this, but I can't take it. I hope you'll understand it's for the best. Please don't try to find me. Just let me go.'

Felicity bent doubled over in her chair, shoulders shaking. Roy and Sara both looked alarmed and Thea put out her hands as though to offer comfort, but she wasn't sure how, while John shook his head and walked over to the heavy bag as though looking for something to punch. It took a moment for Thea to recognize that Felicity was actually laughing.

"'City?" Thea said, as Felicity sat upright, wiping her eyes, still chuckling.

Felicity looked over at Sara. "You would know better than I, but in all the time you've known him, has Oliver ever referred to a girl as 'babe'?"

Sara's eyes widened. "I think he used it once, but he was very drunk and it was a noun, rather than a term of endearment."

John looked at the ceiling and then closed his eyes. "I should have seen that," he said, shaking his head. "He would never have used that kind of term to refer to you. I'm an idiot."

Felicity shook her head. "No. You saw what you were supposed to see. And you could be forgiven for not knowing that he doesn't use those kinds of words. When he's got 28 different ways of just saying my name, why would he need them?"

Sara stood behind Felicity and looked over her shoulder at the note. "His handwriting is better now than it used to be, but that's not saying much. Still, if he were trying to get you to leave him to himself, I doubt he would have fired up the computer and then printed this out, just leaving it at the office for you to find in the morning. If he'd gone to the trouble of typing it out, why not just send it as an email and be done with it?"

Felicity looked at the paper and tested it with her fingers. "I'm betting this wasn't even printed from Oliver's machine. This is heavier than the paper QC uses in its printers and anyway, anyone accessing his computer, or mine, after I've left for the day, would have sent an alert here and to my tablet. Somebody brought it with them when they came to take Oliver."

"Did the security cameras catch anything?" John knew that Felicity had said they'd been manually disabled, but something might have been missed.

"I haven't looked at them beyond finding they'd been tampered with," Felicity admitted. "It was Oliver's key card that gave them access, but Oliver wouldn't have used it that way himself. He wouldn't have known how and frankly he wouldn't have needed to do any of it. It's not like he couldn't have avoided every camera in the building if he'd wanted to. He knows where they all are."

"So we assume that he was taken in the garage," Sara said, "because if he'd really wanted to avoid being seen, he'd have used one of the alley maintenance exits and dodged between the dumpsters until he was out on the street."

Felicity turned back to her computers and started accessing the traffic cameras outside the street side garage exit. All week she'd been testing which ones gave the best views of the garage itself after her own misadventure last month. None of them were perfect, but she was able to catch a glimpse of something close to the elevators that might have been a man falling.

Her view was almost instantly blocked by an idling city bus, which resulted in a stream of very unflattering comments on the bus driver's antecedents, timing and skills. Once the bus was gone, the scene was empty and no vehicles could be seen moving out that exit, even though she watched for several more minutes. No other cameras around had that angle or that image.

Felicity ran the sequence before the bus's interference several times by itself. Thea was peering closely at the monitor, so she missed the unhappy looks that passed between Sara and John. Roy caught Sara's eye and she shrugged.

"If we assume for the sake of argument that this is picture of Oliver falling," Sara said, "I think we can assume that he was darted or tased as he got off the elevator. Since we don't see them drive off with him from this exit, are there other exits they could have used out of the garage?"

Felicity looked thoughtful and started tapping on keys. The pictures on the screen changed and shuffled before settling into a 3 shot by 4 shot grid. The images in each mini-window moved backwards quickly, with the timestamps showing the time in each rewinding from 8:00 pm.

"How can you see anything?" Thea asked.

"I'm looking for blank spots," Felicity said. "If we find one it means they neutralized the camera there and we have a place to start looking."

After several tense minutes with no blanks, Roy said "Wait a minute! Look at the one on the top right. See how that door keeps moving?"

Felicity pulled it up and sent it to a second monitor. There was indeed a tiny movement in the door out to the alley that repeated in a loop. Felicity did a fist pump and kissed Roy on the cheek.

"Good eye, Roy!" Digg said.

Felicity started typing madly. "I'm pulling up the cameras that can see the alley," she explained. A pause, another flurry of keystrokes, another pause, a longer barrage of keystrokes. The third monitor split into 3 images focused on a car very like the sedan Felicity remembered seeing when Malcolm had removed her from the custody of the men Moira Queen had paid to abduct her.

As the Team watched, two men carried Oliver out to the back of the car and stuffed him unceremoniously into the trunk. None of the cameras was able to show the car's plates and the angles on the faces was just as bad. Even repeated watching didn't help confirm anything except that Oliver had no visible bloody marks on his suit.

The two men were joined by another and they got into the car and drove it carefully down the alley, out onto the street beyond. Felicity's fingers danced across the keyboard again and the view shifted so that they were now watching the car make its way through the relatively thin traffic. She was able to follow the sedan for almost 10 miles, until it pulled into a parking garage near the Aquarium. Felicity worked feverishly, but the screen didn't change.

"They don't appear to have a wireless uplink," Felicity said.

Roy heard her muttering something about 'backsliding neanderthals' as she kept trying to find cameras she could hijack to peer into the garage's interior. Before she was able to find any way to see any visuals inside the garage, the sedan returned to the street. It resumed the same path it had been following, but at a gradually increasing rate of speed.

The sedan made a sudden turn and headed across a parking lot, speed still increasing. Felicity watched in horror as the car raced towards the river. Whether it had enough speed to clear the embankment or not, the results were going to be very bad for the car and it's occupants.

Thea whispered "Noooooo!" in a low moan, as Roy put his arms around her. From the look on his face, it was hard to tell if he was giving comfort or taking it. Sara watched carefully to see if any doors opened before the crash, while Digg stepped up and put an arm around Felicity.

The car reached the embankment and started to crest it like there was a ramp built for it. The camera angles were bad, so Sara couldn't tell if there actually was something placed there for the purpose, but she suspected there was something because the driver's side door didn't pop open until the car was on the downward side of its arc. Only the driver's door opened, and Sara smiled in relief.

Thea looked at Sara in disbelief, but Felicity understood why. "They weren't ditching a body, they were ditching the one thing that would tie them to the abduction."

Sara nodded. "I'm going to take a look around that garage. We might get lucky, but we might get luckier at QC." She looked over at Diggle. "John, I think you should go with Roy and see what you can find there."

Felicity nodded. "Thea, I'm going to ask you to help me here. There's a lot of footage I skipped past because I was following the car Oliver was in. We need to look more closely at other cars on the road and I want to see if the plate for the first car is visible somewhere along the way, so we can see if it goes back to the same place as the van and the sedan that were involved ... before."

Thea gave Roy a hug and a fierce kiss as Sara moved to suit up. Pulling up another chair next to Felicity, Thea said, "Tell me what you need me to do."

"First, I'm downloading the sequence we watched to a DVD so we have it if we need it." Felicity tapped a few keys as she spoke and slipped a disk into the drive slot. "We'll need to decide pretty quickly if we're going to report him missing and how."

Thea cocked her head at Felicity and then nodded. There was no way as yet to know exactly who these people had taken. Were they after Oliver Queen, CEO, or the Arrow? Or was there something else entirely going on here.

"If the car comes back to the same place as the other one," Thea began.

"We will be having a pointed conversation with your mother." Felicity looked over at Thea. "I don't think she would do anything to him. Whatever else she may feel, however angry she may be with him, I truly don't believe she would harm either of you. What worries me most is how easily other people seem to be able to mess up her plans."

"How can we have a 'pointed conversation' if the Arrow is missing?"

"John has worn the suit before," Felicity told her, shrugging. "With him, and Sara, in their leathers, we should be able to get her to spill what's going on. If she knows."

"You think she doesn't?"

Felicity shrugged. "After having Malcolm scoop me out of the hands of the men she'd hired to kidnap me, I have a lot less faith in her omniscience."

Thea shuddered. If Malcolm hadn't been able to take Felicity, a lot of things wouldn't have happened, including, she suspected, the conversation that brought her here. She was of two minds about that part, because it probably would also have meant that Oliver would not have proposed, either and she was glad he'd done that. He deserved to be able to smile again.

It raised a question Thea suspected she knew how Oliver would answer: if it ended with him engaged to Felicity, would he do it all again? Oliver would probably say yes. But would Felicity?

When Thea asked, Felicity looked at her strangely.

"That's an odd question. My first instinct is to say no, because I hated that he had to put himself in Malcolm's hands." She shivered before she continued. "Malcolm was very specific about what he was going to do to Oliver once he surrendered. Very graphic. He already knew Oliver was the Arrow, because of the Undertaking."

Felicity turned to look at Thea. "That night, Digg went with Oliver when he confronted Malcolm because it was the only chance we had that Oliver would survive. Oliver had fought Malcolm before, twice, and both times Malcolm had defeated him. The first time was when he had that 'motorcycle accident' the night of Walter's disappearance."

Thea looked at her, eyes huge, stricken.

Felicity nodded. "It was only because Oliver was able to get a hold of Detective Lance that he allowed John to come with him. We'd discovered that the machine could be triggered remotely and Oliver knew that we couldn't trust to being sure of getting the trigger away from Malcolm as our only way of stopping it. Which is how I came to talk Detective Lance through disarming the device we found."

Thea's mind reeled. Lance's kindness towards Felicity during their interview/interrogation was clear now. But something caught her about what was only sort of being said.

"Oliver didn't expect to survive fighting Malcolm that night," Thea whispered, horrified by the realization. "He was going to go fight him alone even though it would probably get him killed."

Felicity put her arms around Thea as she remembered watching Oliver take the other bow out of the wooden box he'd come home with. His mother had just announced to the world that she'd been involved in Malcolm's horror, but he'd looked eerily calm, almost resigned. He'd tried to order her out of the basement, out of the area, but she'd been clear that he wouldn't do it all alone, that she would never leave him.

That one instant, where he'd argued, told her it was dangerous to stay. That was the one that cemented firmly in her heart the conviction that Oliver was a true hero. He had come back from the dead to rescue his city, his home, and if doing it meant that he would die again, he would do that to accomplish his mission and fulfill his father's last wish.

"To stop him, Oliver stabbed Malcolm in the chest with one of Malcolm's own arrows," Felicity continued. "This was awkward as Malcolm was behind Oliver at the time, strangling him."

Thea looked at her, frowning. "How? Not ..."

Felicity nodded, turning back to her screens. "The way Malcolm spoke about it he seemed to be equally pissed and amused. But it was that determination to thwart Malcolm's plan then that made him plan to kill Oliver before he took you away. He knew that Oliver would never stand aside and do nothing; that Oliver would fight to get you back. Fight and keep fighting until he got you home."

Thea put her head down. "I was so pissed when he up and disappeared after the quake. No word, not even a postcard for five months. While I was stuck here, holding down the fort and going crazy."

"When Malcolm triggered the second machine, Oliver saw that it was destroying the east side of the Glades, where Laurel's office was. He knew she wouldn't have left all their records and files to be destroyed, so he took his bike and tried to get there before it was too late."

Thea understood what Felicity wasn't saying. Oliver had spent the previous seven months doing battle against the people, like their mother, who had supported Malcolm in his mad quest for vengeance. He'd expected to lose his life winning the fight, only to have Tommy be the one who died, saving Laurel. The wonder wasn't that he run from the pain, it was that he'd come back. At all.

"Why did he come back?" Thea whispered. "Wait, John said something about after the quake. He went back to Lian Yu? After spending five years trying to get off it?"

Felicity smiled sadly. "He thought he'd failed, you see. He was punishing himself by going back." She looked back at the monitors and added, "I gave him as long as I could, but then Isabel Rochev decided to kill QC and I knew he wouldn't forgive himself if that happened without his knowledge."

"So you and John knew where he'd gone, all along?"

Felicity heard the hurt in Thea's voice. "No. I knew he needed time to heal, so I left him to it for a couple of months before I started tracking him. In retrospect, I should have guessed he'd wind up back there. John said once that he thought Oliver hadn't really ever left it, even though he'd been 'rescued' and it made sense when I thought about it. I think we brought him home for good this time."

Taking a deep breath, Felicity turned back to the computers. "I'm going to start with the security feeds in the garage going back to this morning. You saw the men who put Oliver in the trunk, so you know how they were dressed. I suspect that they were waiting for him for a while, possibly from the time I left this afternoon."

Images popped up on screen in front of Thea.

"Go through from the morning in case there was an earlier shift, or if they circulated. If there's no sign of them before they wiped the records, we'll look at the lobby too. The elevator bank would have told them what cabs stopped on what floors, so they would have known when one stopped on the Executive floor and didn't end their trip in the lobby." Thea nodded and started scanning.

Felicity went back to the beginning of the car's run from the alley to the garage. There were three cars that caught her attention. None of them followed the sedan into the garage, but one of them appeared to have circled the block while the sedan was out of sight, so she tagged it and was able to backtrack to a point where the license plate was legible. She suspected that both the plates and the car itself were stolen, but it was a clue. It was a start.

For a second, Felicity closed her eyes. 'Wherever you are Oliver, hang on. We're hunting you as hard as we can.'


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity and Thea approach Moira about Oliver's disappearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Felicity

The garage footage showed the four men swapping Oliver from one trunk to another in a suspiciously smooth and practiced maneuver. They only got it because Sara (in costume) was able to force the attendant to hand over all the disks for the place. There'd been no way to bug the place safely, so they'd settled for continuing to watch from the outside with the street and surrounding security cameras.

Diggle had come up empty at QC as well. The cameras only showed the cars leaving, one at a time. Nor had there been any useful fingerprints on any of the doors or desks. In fact all the surfaces where there should have been layers of prints all over had been cleaned aggressively. The cars were mutual dead ends as well, both of them having been stolen from QC and then ditched. The second one had been torched.

 

It had been 14 days since Oliver had been taken. 

Felicity had spoken to Isabel about it after 48 hours, however distasteful the task had been. As his fiancee, Felicity's decision to keep things quiet carried more weight than it would have otherwise and Isabel was anxious to avoid any adverse publicity. It was agreed that they would excuse his absence as a sudden QC trip.

During this frantic time, Felicity was sometimes afraid she was the only one certain they would find Oliver. Or at least that they would find him alive. It frayed at her heart to have to be the sole moral support of the team, but she knew that Oliver would be expecting them to be doing everything they could to carry on while they searched for him.

Digg and Sara, Digg and Roy, Roy and Sara rotated patrols, keeping up the fiction that the Arrow was still active and watching the city. Felicity set up a dozen different searches and multiple face-recognition scans of the city's many public cameras, not hesitating to hijack any private systems she was able to bend to her will. They were looking for Oliver, but they were also looking for the faces Thea had found good likenesses of from the garage and lobby cameras.

Felicity had printed out all the viable images they had for the kidnappers and copied all the security and traffic camera footage of the kidnapping onto a disk. Digg had passed the bundle on to Lyla, to see if A.R.G.U.S. had any leads to share. So far that was a bust as well, but everyone was still looking.

Sara had even volunteered to ask her dad about the men, but Felicity was reluctant to use him except as a last resort. Lance she would trust with her life, but there was the possibility that there were people inside the SCPD waiting to see if anyone was following up on the incident. And since they weren't officially reporting the attack, it would raise questions Felicity didn't want to have to deal with without Oliver present.

They'd talked about approaching the Bratva, but Sara and Digg agreed that it would only be as the ultimate last resort. First because it would damage Oliver's standing within the organization, which would be bad. Second because it would also place Oliver under an obligation it might be difficult to resolve.

Taking the printout she'd begun before her own abduction, Felicity began to work her way through the bank accounts that Moira might have opened. It stood to reason that the kidnappers wanted something in exchange for Oliver and money was likely the first option. Since Moira knew she had been watching the Tempest account, the transfer would likely have been buried under several careful layers, complicated by not knowing the amount demanded or the date(s) payment might have been made.

Digg was suiting up on Wednesday of what was the start of Oliver's third week missing. He and Sara had been sparring, both to loosen up and to work off some of their frustrations. It had been very quiet in the lair in Oliver's absence, so Felicity's crow of triumph followed by her fist salute caught everyone off guard.

"I found the accounts!"

Digg, Roy and Sara huddled around her at her desk. "What accounts?" Sara asked.

Felicity tapped the printout next to her. "Before she had me kidnapped, I'd started a search for other anonymous accounts Mrs. Queen might have opened to make illicit payments, since I'd found out about Thea because she used the same account Walter had asked me to look into before Malcolm had him kidnapped."

"Woman's too twisty for her own good." Digg said, shaking his head.

"So I identified six accounts, all opened within a week and all using variations on the Queen family names. They were each seeded with $250,000 and then just set adrift. One account, under the name of 'Jonas Dearden', has paid out $100,000 twice, to two different accounts. The first payment was the Friday after Oliver was taken, the second was made the following Friday."

"She's definitely evil," Sara said, "but she's not going to pay anything if they can't prove Oliver's alive. She has to be getting some kind of assurances from them or she'd be raining down the wrath of God on them."

"Yeah, but what?" Roy asked. "And how?"

Felicity looked at the screen. "It would have to be something she would trust, so either she's able to talk to him or they have a live-feed camera like Malcolm had with Walter."

"Could be as simple as a picture with the newspaper," Sara said, shrugging. When everyone turned to look at her she said, "They won't trust her to actually make contact with Oliver, since there would be the chance he could give her some kind of hint as to where he is. Morse code eyeblinks, or something."

Felicity glanced up at Sara and nodded. "At two weeks and no sign of him, I'd have to say they're probably drugging him. Otherwise he would have made at least one attempt to escape."

"At which point they would have started drugging him, anyway!" Digg said.

"Oliver knows how to be patient," Sara said. "It's not his best skill, but he'd be careful in this situation because he wouldn't want to reveal things about himself that might lead back to the Arrow, either on his mother's part or his kidnappers'. He'd know they were feeling cocky given how easily they took him down and he wouldn't waste that unless he thought he could actually make it out."

Felicity nodded. "Okay. So we take as given that she wouldn't have been paying without some proof of life, it's unlikely to be something delivered by mail."

Digg nodded. "Too risky given the chance of it getting delayed or worse, being misdelivered. Hand delivery would be equally risky for different reasons, since it would be easy to lie in wait for the deliverer."

"Who could be jumped or trailed back to base," Roy finished with a grimace. "Assuming they weren't dupes hired for the purpose. And that would mean someone would be constantly looking for idiots they could trust to go out to the mansion and deliver the goods without getting curious themselves. I wouldn't bet on finding one of those, let alone 14 plus."

"So it would be phone or email," Felicity said.

"What would be phone or email?" Thea asked, coming down the stairs.

Felicity gave her a quick recap of what she'd discovered so far and what conclusions they'd drawn. "What do you think?"

Thea put her arms around Roy's waist and leaned into his shoulder. Roy responded by putting his arms around her waist. Felicity could tell the girl was having a hard time absorbing their conclusions. Not because she didn't agree, but because she did.

"She's okay tech-savvy. I mean she had me set up her email account a few years back, but it didn't take her long to get the hang of it and she'd have no trouble setting up multiple accounts on her own by now. Her phone was the same way."

"The Monday after the Weekend From Hell, I cleaned a file off your Mother's computer," Felicity said, with a glance at Digg.

"What was it?" Thea asked.

"You remember I told you to be careful of that camera in your room?" Digg asked Thea.

"Yeah. It was kinda creepy for her to be watching my bed, but since I hadn't been home, it didn't catch anything."

"She caught Oliver in a ... private moment and I suggested to Felicity that she make sure there wasn't even a ghost of the file on any computers."

"Which I did," Felicity concluded, her eyes dark and distant. "The problem is that this seems to have prompted your mother to bump her security up to NSA levels."

"So it's going to take a few hours to get through it," Sara said.

Felicity nodded. "I should be in by the time you guys get back from patrol. At least through the first few layers that can be done on autopilot. We'll see how serious she got once I'm past that."

Digg and Roy went out together, while Sara went off to find Sin. They'd had her looking for the kidnappers too, figuring that the Glades was the easiest place to hide a rich-boy captive like they would expect Oliver to be. They wouldn't believe he'd know his way around these slums better than he knew his own home, which could hopefully provide him, and Team Arrow, with the edge they needed to get him safely back again.

 

After 3 weeks gone, Thea broke down and had a huge screaming fit in the middle of the lair. 

Roy had held her until the storm subsided and then taken her home. Felicity blamed herself for not remembering that Thea's job of running Verdant as though there was nothing wrong with her world was probably the hardest of all of them.

The next morning, Felicity called Walter and asked him to arrange a meeting with Moira as soon as possible. Which turned out to be 3 days later. Steaming quietly, Felicity agreed then called Thea.

"I have an appointment to see your mother Friday," Felicity began.

"I'll come with you," Thea said, instantly.

"Thank you." Felicity knew it still had to be hard for Thea to face Moira. "I'm going to ask you to slip a bug into one of the house phones, so we can monitor her communications. I'm still working on getting into her computer, which makes me wonder what else she might be hiding."

"Wow, okay. What about her cell?"

"I'm tweaking an app that will run in the background. I'll send it to her phone via text when I'm done. Maybe to Walter's as well, in case they try him too."

"Do you think they would?"

"I don't know. I just think that because he's so deeply involved with her campaign as well as his history with Oliver, they might use him to push her. I don't want to miss any chance."

That morning, Digg picked Felicity up at her old apartment, where she and Oliver were living until he could find a place for both of them to start their life together. Knowing that she was essentially holding the team together on hope and her own bone-deep certainty, Digg met her at the car with a big hug. She let go for a moment; no tears, no drama, just letting herself lean into him. Then she pulled herself together and got in the car.

Getting in himself, he looked at her in the rearview.

"I'd know if he was gone, John."

He nodded and they drove out to pick up Thea. On the drive out to the mansion, Felicity outlined how she planned to confront Moira. "I think if I go straight to it, she'll probably begin by trying to deny it. It's her natural reaction, her first instinct. My feeling is that if I keep pushing she'll realize she can't keep hiding what she knows from us and she'll eventually have to break down and talk to us."

"How do we explain that we can do things she can't, when it comes to finding Oliver?" Thea asked. "We aren't going to tell her we work for the Arrow, that her son is the Arrow. Are we?"

"We are not going to tell her anything she doesn't already know," Felicity said. "She had him kidnapped and tortured the first time he stepped out of the house, back when he was rescued. As far as she knows, those men were killed by the Hood. Then there's the fact that we credited the Arrow with rescuing us from Malcolm, and if she's any kind of devious, she'll have already found out that Lance and I have worked together with me his as liaison with the Arrow. Or the Arrow's liaison with the police."

"You think she was able to get a copy of Lance's report?" Digg asked.

"Given how many of Starling City's finest are for rent if not for sale, I doubt she had to wait a day for it." Felicity shrugged. "Their file system is laughably easy to hack, so for all I know she could have done it herself."

"And if she still resists?" Digg asked.

"Then you and Sara can have a pointed conversation with her," Felicity said with a shrug. "Sara would love the chance to twist her arm since she found out that Moira knew where to find the Gambit."

"Wouldn't she recognize Sara?" Thea asked.

"I don't think it would occur to her that she might know somebody who dresses up at night and fights crime. She didn't recognize her own son the night he confronted her in her office. She shot him."

Thea covered her face. "She did, didn't she. I hate that we can't hit her with all the things she's done that have hurt him. I find myself wondering if it would even make a difference if she did know. If she would, if she could change how she operates."

"I truly think she would be horrified if she knew, but I don't know if she would recognize why she ought to change because of that."

They pulled up to the front door of the Mansion and Digg got out to help the ladies out. "I'm going to go around to the kitchen and see what the story is from there," he said. "Text me when you're ready to go."

Felicity took a deep breath and steeled herself to confront Oliver's mother. It hadn't gone well the last time, but she had no illusions about Moira's character now so she was better prepared. Until she saw that Walter Steele was sitting with his ex-wife on the couch, with a wooden side chair placed across the coffee table that was evidently for her.

Thea, as planned, had gone directly up to her room to bug the extension in her room, and pick up a few more outfits, just as cover. Felicity was traitorously wishing she hadn't sent the girl up first, so that she wouldn't have to face this pair alone.

"You wanted to see me, Ms. Smoak," Moira's tone was frosty but not actively hostile. Felicity put that down to Walter's presence, but she wasn't sure what to make of it.

When in doubt, ask. Walter at least would probably answer her.

"I wasn't expecting to see you, Mr. Steele."

Walter's mouth twisted at her formal tone. "I asked Moira if she wanted me to sit in on this meeting, since I expect it will be awkward. She said yes."

"Awkward." Felicity said, testing it. "Awkward. I have a different definition of awkward than you do, Mr. Steele. I find Oliver's kidnapping to be more frightening than awkward."

"Kidnapping?" Walter's tone gave him away. He'd known about it, likely as soon as Moira had been told. Felicity shook her head. Really, Walter was a worse liar than Oliver when it came to it.

"Kidnapping." Felicity dealt out stills she'd made from the cameras she'd used to track the men's movements. Walter stiffened in surprise, but Moira's expression was a little harder to read it was gone so quickly.

"Who took him and what do they want?" she demanded, sitting in the chair across from them.

Moira picked up the pictures and looked at them. "What are these?"

"Traffic cameras, security cameras. When I'm motivated, I find a way to find things out. I'm guessing that they're the same group you had kidnap Oliver and torture him his first time out of the house?"

Silence.

"Between the Hood and Malcolm Merlyn, your activities have cost them several lives. I'm guessing they want more money for their pain and suffering. And because he's at QC every day, Oliver was an easier target than Thea."

"Moira?" If Walter was expecting a denial or any kind of response, Felicity was guessing he was going to have a wait.

"You've dealt with these people before, so you know how to get in touch with them. And they know how to get in touch with you. I want to know everything about how they contacted you and what they want. Oliver's life is at stake and even if you don't care anymore, I will not allow you to get him killed."

Moira raised an eyebrow. "Such nonsense. I assumed you sought this meeting to apologize for the trouble you've caused this family."

Felicity was harsh. "How about you apologize to Oliver? Twenty-one days. 504 hours. In the hands of men you already paid once to torture him. I don't know about you, but my mind is working overtime pulling up all the things one person can do to hurt another. Hasn't he been hurt enough? Tell me what they want! Tell me who they are and how you found them?"

"What other secrets can you be hiding?" Thea sounded as tired as Felicity felt. She had a shopping bag full of things from her room, which she set next to Felicity's chair. "Can't you see how much harm your 'secrets' are causing? After ... Malcolm nearly killed Oliver you're still trying to hide things?"

"That nonsense!" Moira scoffed, leaning forward. "I read that report. It's utter nonsense."

Thea nodded. "Yes, it was. Because there was no way to explain it otherwise. Oliver didn't want to tell them that the reason Malcolm wanted him dead was so that I would be totally alone, with no one to protect me from my ... father."

Moira's eyes widened but she remained silent.

"That's right. He wanted me to be totally alone, and he knew Oliver would never stand for whatever craziness he had planned for me. Because Oliver doesn't care who my father is. I want him back and you're going to tell us what you know so we can do something about it."

"Thea," Walter began.

Thea shook her head, not looking at him. "I don't want to talk to you. You knew and you said nothing. You divorced her and you still said nothing. You asked her to run for mayor, knowing, and you kept quiet. I'm very disappointed."

"Walter only did as I asked." Moira's voice was firm. "To protect you."

"Walter was the last person you got kidnapped, too. But here he sits supporting you." Thea waved at him, still looking at Moira. "So, when did you find the Gambit? How long before Oliver was found? Why didn't you even look for him?"

"Thea!"

"You gave up on him then and you're giving up on him now!"

"Thea! That's not true!"

"You're sitting here like everything's alright and it's not! You won't tell us what happened. You won't tell us what you know. You're still so wound up in this vendetta you're pursuing against Felicity that you're ignoring the fact that Oliver loves her!"

Thea threw up her hands. "You can't see past your own agenda to understand that bruising her wounds him. Stop it! Get over yourself and let us help find him before something else awful happens to him because you're being a bitch!"

Moira's face went white as Thea's tirade rolled over her. The last comment sent a flush of anger to her cheeks, but her tone was even when she spoke.

"I can see that we have nothing to discuss. When you're both prepared to be rational, we can talk again." Standing up, Moira left the room.

"Why do you still support her?" Thea asked, standing in front of Walter as he moved to follow.

He looked at her sadly. "I know you see only the part of her that has hurt you, Thea, but she really does love you both. She is ashamed of her connection to Malcolm and what she did while trying to protect you two. I believe she still has a lot to offer to the city and she wants to make amends for her wrongs. I wish you'd give her a second chance, help her make this a better city."

Thea shook her head. "You're still hiding things for her. How can you believe that she wants a second chance when what she's done with it so far is to kidnap Felicity and now she's gotten Oliver kidnapped. If she hadn't lied about who my father is, if she'd come clean at least to Oliver and me when the affair came out, we'd have both been pissed, but it wouldn't have been this kind of a meltdown. This kind of permanent."

Moving out of Walter's way she added, "If any more harm comes to Oliver because of her, I'll be the first in line to spit on her as I change my name. I won't be associated with her and I will never speak her name again. You should tell her that I'm really close to doing that now, but I'll wait and talk to Oliver before I make it final."


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moira's private thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Moira

They have taken my son. They have dared to threaten my son. I will see them destroyed if it's the last thing I do.

They send me a picture of him every day. He's still wearing the same suit in each picture and he seems to be drugged when they take the pictures because his eyes are closed and his body limp. At first I was terrified that he was dead and they were teasing me with these pictures, changing only the newspaper to make it seem as though he was still alive, but his hair and beard are growing longer day by day.

Walter was with me when I received the third picture, and their first demand. To deposit $100,000 to an account they have specified and they will continue to keep Oliver alive for another week. I sent the money but I demanded to be able to speak to my son, to at least hear his voice. They did not respond, nor have they.

Walter wants to involve the police. Knowing how easy it is to suborn them, I'm not willing to trust Oliver's safety to their hands. Now I wish I knew how to contact the Vigilante. I would do anything, pay anything, to have my son safe and free.

They have sent a new list of demands this time, in addition to the money. Some of them I can only accomplish if I'm elected. They've had Oliver for 3 weeks and if they've been keeping him drugged all that time I'm afraid of the consequences for his body as well as his mind. If they continue this until the election, and after as their demands imply, it may be that they do not intend to ever return him.

I have made my contact aware of this development and he was surprised at it. He is investigating from his end, but he has to be discreet or we'll tip our hand before we're ready. He and I are of one mind when it comes to traitors in our midst and he is aware of the damage I can do if I desire.

His investigation has turned up a strange connection. There is a Bratva captain using my son's name. I've asked him to avoid contacting them since I don't want to muddy the waters further, but once this is done, I will want to revisit the question. For now I want to find my son, free him and then set about destroying the fools who dared touch him.


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walter's thoughts and feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Walter

Walter watched Thea and Felicity walk out of the room. He understood Thea's anguish. The look on her face the day the headstones had been erected on the lawn was etched in his mind and it was perilously close to the way she'd looked at him just now. Crossing to the window, he watched Oliver's driver let them into the car and drive away. Moira came up behind him and leaned her head on his shoulder.

There was much that Thea said that stung him. He knew that she saw things more in black and white because she was still very much a child. Still, there was the part of her mother that was all ice and hard edges that he'd heard in her last threat/promise.

He'd told himself he was past blaming Moira for what she'd had to do to survive Malcolm. Water under the bridge and all that. Her actions against Felicity were harder to accept, especially in light of Thea's impassioned outburst about the truth behind the story they'd told Lance.

"You were wrong to take reprisals against Felicity."

"I can see that now." Moira's voice was almost inaudible, but he could hear the regret. "Thea was right. I was too much of a coward to face their anger when the affair came out. I keep seeing them both, sitting in front of me, assuring me that they would still love me."

She moved away from him and began to pace. "Oliver knew I was holding something back, even then. He asked me, all but begged me, to tell him the truth. But I thought I could manage to keep the worst of it from them."

He could see her sadness, but he could also hear the undercurrent of anger. "I owe my son a debt I may never be able to repay. Thea was right when she said that the easiest way to hurt him was to hurt Ms. Smoak and I didn't see that, didn't even consider it. I discounted her because of the gossip, because I knew he wasn't sleeping with her and I just assumed the attraction was all on her side."

Moira turned and looked at Walter with a grim smile. "If she'd wanted revenge, all Ms. Smoak would have had to do was leak my involvement in her disappearance. Just mention it in passing to Quentin Lance as a theory and my candidacy would evaporate. But doing that would hurt Oliver and she won't do anything that might hurt him."

"She loves him." Walter acknowledged. "It's a different kind of love than a Mother's love, but it's still a force to be reckoned with. I don't think she'll just go away because you've stonewalled her so far."

"Of course she won't," Moira agreed. "I suspect she'd waste time trying to find a double meaning in it if I asked her to find the Vigilante for me. He's taken something of an interest in Oliver and this family and I hope she can persuade him to do so again, even if there's no threat like the Undertaking in the background."

Walter shook his head. "You think he can find Oliver?"

"I can only hope so."


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver's turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Oliver

I'm getting tired of coming to in dark rooms. This one smells different than the last one, more mold and only a hint of anything chemical. The last one reeked of soot and petroleum and the one before that had been moldy paper and dead animals.

The first room I remember smelled something like this one, but this is colder. Or at least, I'm feeling colder here. Then, too, this room is larger than the first. When I cough, the echo is different, telling me the ceiling is higher. So possibly, probably, a different part of the same building.

The traffic pattern I can hear outside is busier than I remember from that first room, but being awake at a different time of day could account for that. I know I've been outdoors in a vehicle more than once, but they could simply have been moving me from building to building within one industrial plant.

I'm not sure what drugs they're using on me, but the first few minutes coming out of them could qualify as a form of torture. I'm nauseous and I've got a migraine that makes just breathing hurt. So long as I concentrate on the mechanics of inhale/exhale I can get past the worst of it without actually vomiting. Sometimes it's been a nearer thing than others.

They've been pretty careful about feeding me and while it beats raw fish, I've never been a big fan of peanut butter. Since I'm not aware of getting any injections, I suspect that the drugs are administered through the food, since the water bottles are always sealed when they bring them. I'd kill for a hamburger, but then I'd kill for an open door and a 5 second head start.

Still, I'm pretty sure I'm still in Starling. Probably in the Glades, with its abundance of abandoned industrial sites that nobody is even trying to keep track of since the quake. Why go any further when you don't have to?

The blindfold is less roughly tied this time, but still firmly in place, and I can't see through or around the edges of it. They're also still relying on the zip ties to keep me in line, so that's to the good. I just hate how long this is taking, waiting for the right time to make my move.

They caught me as I was leaving QC and none of them even got bruised. They took me down from behind with a dart. I'm guessing they used my keycard to erase the act since my last memory of the garage is feeling hands rifling my pockets.

I have no idea what day it is, or even what time of day it is, but I do know why they took me. If I weren't so pissed about it I could almost laugh, because it has nothing directly to do with QC or the Arrow. These guys are the people who do my mother's dirty work and they are not happy with her.

I don't think they'd be impressed if I commiserated. Malcolm shot three of their number before I got to them, and they don't know that the only reason the other two are still breathing is that I haven't had time to hunt them down personally. Then there were the ones I killed when the Hood made his 'debut.' Yeah, I'd say they'd be unhappy with me too, if they knew how my thoughts are trending.

What has me craziest right now is that I have no idea how long I've been away. They've kept me drugged for what feels like long patches most of the time they've had me, so I could have been gone weeks or it could even be months. I can't imagine what's going through Felicity's mind right now.

And for all that, I don't think it's been more than 2 or 3 weeks at the outside, based mostly on how my endurance is holding. I can't do much in the way of maintenance without arousing suspicion. They take me on bathroom breaks when they feed me and what I can do doesn't tax me the way I would expect it to if I'd been immobilized for much longer than that.

I know my team will be looking for me. I swear I'm going to bug everyone's shoes when I get back. I can only hope one of these geniuses is sucker enough to turn on my phone. Felicity will be watching for it, the same way Digg and I watched for hers.

It has to be faced that there's the possibility my mother will simply cut her losses when it comes to me. She and I have said and done too many things for us to ever be what we were. I have to face that it may come to the point that she'll just tell them to stuff me in hole somewhere and wash her hands of the whole problem I represent.

And yet, I suspect she won't. Mostly based on a realization that I wouldn't do it if our places were reversed. It came to me one night after hearing my fiancée (God I love saying that!) explain to Digg how easy it was to see how similar my mother and I are temperamentally. Galling as it was, I have come to see her point.

We are both champion secret-keepers. One of the things I wondered after the Undertaking was if it would have made a difference in the outcome if I'd told her I was the Hood? Or would she have just told Malcolm and let him kidnap me the way he did Walter?

Then, too, I'm still not sure when she found the Gambit. I'd been willing to let it slide before I found out about Thea. Afterward, I was so angry with her for threatening Felicity and everything that happened because of that, I've only yelled at her, not actually spoken with her.

And now this. I know she'll try to keep her involvement secret from Thea and Felicity. I don't think my Girl Wednesday will buy it for a second, after everything else that's happened, but I'm not sure my mother will have the sense to cave if pressed. Felicity may have to ask Digg to step up and threaten to Arrow her.

I don't know how well that will work in these circumstances. When we did it before, Digg was able to play on her maternal instincts by pretending to beat me up. I don't know if he can explain why the Arrow is threatening her over her son's absence without making things worse. If he can do it, I'll deal with the consequences later and be glad for them.

So far, the men here haven't threatened to send a piece of me home as proof that they have me. I'm grateful that they seem not to have thought of it yet, but I have a way around it to suggest if they do. Bloody fingerprints would be a nice visual and still allow me to remain intact.

Of course, they may be using a remote camera to send her visuals. I wish I could risk looking around the room, but the fact that they're begin careful to deny me visuals is kind of comforting. If they start to stop caring whether I see them or not, I'll know they don't need me alive anymore. Then my game plan would have to change.

So far, if I'm right, they see me as nothing more than a valuable hunk of meat. I'm just a tool they consider useful for the purpose of blackmailing my mother for money. Of course, they have no idea what they've really got hold of in me and I'm not going to rush to show them.

They may not understand how ice cold she can be. She may be running for Mayor now, with all the pitfalls of that level of public scrutiny, but they shouldn't forget that she played mouse to Malcolm's cat for all the 5 years I was gone. If I weren't part of the floor show, it would be interesting to watch her work.

What worries me most about how I'm reading their expectations is that they seem to have forgotten, or perhaps haven't had cause to learn, how vindictive she can be. It isn't as if she didn't know who they were, or how to find them in the general way of it, however well they may be hiding out now. What do I become when somebody realizes that an angry Moira Queen will be the death of them?


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diggle has his say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Digg

I can tell by the way they come out of the mansion that the interview did not go well for our side. Felicity is angry and I can see the wheels turning a mile a minute. I wouldn’t have thought Mrs. Queen could piss her off more thoroughly than she had over that recording of Oliver, but I guess I was wrong. 

Thea looks like somebody kicked her puppy. I can tell she’s angry and sad and still more than a little lost. Gonna have to see to it she gets some alone time with Roy soon. Hopefully she’ll just cry on his shirt, but whatever gets her through this.

I know Felicity was hoping not to have to bring out the Big Bad Green, but I’m kinda psyched about it. Mrs. Queen deserves a visit like few others; mayoral candidate or not she’s failed more than just this city. Oliver has been through enough hell without having his own mother making it worse.

As I start to pull out, I look in the rearview at Felicity. “You ladies didn’t eat, I’m guessing.”

Felicity startles at the sound of my voice, meeting my eyes in the mirror. “What? No. No, we weren’t there for that.”

“Big Belly it is, then,” I say as I start watching traffic ahead. There’s only a couple of other vehicles on the road just now, but one of them is a delivery van with smoked widows. It’s probably not a threat, but I’d rather be safe, considering my cargo.

“What? No!” Felicity is fussing, but I’m not paying any mind. “We need to get back to the lair and start monitoring her phone.”

I snort. “You mean you didn’t bring your tablet?” She huffs but can’t deny it’s in her purse. “Both of you need to eat. Falling over in a dead faint is not going to help Oliver and you know he’d be pissed if made yourselves sick over him. So there’s an end to it. Big Belly here we come.”

We eat and I’m glad to see both of them perk up a little. They’ve both been running on fumes since Oliver disappeared and while Felicity has had the burden of supporting the Team while he’s been gone, at least she hasn’t had to pretend nothing’s wrong. Thea has had to run the club and look like nothing’s wrong all the while knowing she could have lost her brother for good this time.

Felicity says she’d know if Oliver were dead, and I’m willing to believe that. The two of them have such a deep connection between them I’m willing to accept that she’d know, the same way he’s know. I just hope we’re not all whistling in the dark. 

What worries me most is that Sara’s friend Sin hasn’t been seen for the last day or so. I haven’t told Felicity but Sara said she’d asked the girl to keep her ear to the ground about Oliver and I really wish she hadn’t. Sin’s tough as nails, but she’s still a little bitty thing and what could have happened to her makes my skin crawl to think of.


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver has company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Oliver

The game has changed. On a lot of levels. Most of them bad, unfortunately.

They gave me a hairsbreadth of a chance and I took it. I got out of the building, but I wasn't able to get past the guards to get out of the plant. I'm definitely still in the Glades, because I could see the clock tower Sara used when she first came back.

Which is probably why they found Sin. I'm guessing she was looking for me because she wouldn't have been inside the plant otherwise. They threatened her with rape and other things if I didn't stand down, so I did.

Their immediate retribution was first to take my clothes. They've left me my shorts, but I can deal with that. They've put the two us into a storage pit and they're patrolling along the edge.

Honors are even on the bruise side, but I'm ahead by at least two broken noses. The thing is that I've now seen most of them without their masks. So has Sin. They haven't dispensed with them, but that doesn't mean the game hasn't shifted.

I'm marginally surprised that they haven't drugged us both. I guess that having Sin means they have more leverage and they know it. Of course, now that I've seen their faces, keeping me immobile may be more trouble that it's worth.

Still, now that I'm not drugged, I can move around more, which will make it easier to gain back some of what I've lost these last weeks. I'm going to need to be better if I'm going to get both of us out of here. Or at least make enough trouble for Sin to make a break and make it.

"Sorry I busted up your breakout."

I shrug and think about what would have happened to her if they'd caught her after I'd made it out and I'm less upset than she is. Sara would have them on stakes for what they've suggested, even if she weren't a friend. At least she handles herself well, so she's going to be more of a help than a hindrance if I get another chance.

I make a circuit of the pit, looking for potential weapons as well as another way out. Pretty much damn all, but not unexpected. On the bright side, there is a bar I can use for pull ups in the corner, so I start on that.

Sin comes to stand next to me as I work. I know she knows Roy and Thea, as well as Sara, but this is the closest I've been to her without one of them around. She's smaller than I realized because the leather jacket camouflage they've taken from her was hiding how tiny she is.

"You know they're all looking for you."

I nod. "How long?"

"Three weeks." She cocks her head at me, not understanding, and then sighs and looks around. "Bird gonna be sooooo pissed at me."

I nod again. Sara will rip her a new one for coming in here alone. I can only hope the team has a clue to where she'd been looking for me or we could be here a lot longer.

She's trying not to look at my skin, and I'm trying not to care that she's failing. I suspect she's seen Sara's scars and knows how she got some of them. I don't care if the kid puts the pieces together, much. I just don't want her to say anything here, where unfriendly ears can hear.

Instead of saying anything, Sin starts walking around the perimeter of the tank. I'm not sure what she's looking for, and she probably isn't either. I do another ten reps and stop, dropping off the bar. It's barely a tenth of the reps I would be doing in the lair, but I don't want the men holding us to realize what I can actually do. My escape attempt has given them enough of a show.

"You've been holding out on us, Mr. Queen."

The speaker is standing at the edge of the pit, looking down at us with his hands on his hips. He's built like Roy, tall and skinny, but he's wearing a silk suit Roy would never be able to afford on his own. Suddenly, I'm way more partial to red hoodies than I used to be.

I can hear the smirk even though he's wearing one of the full-face masks like the men who took Felicity. Part of me I recognize as the Hood, rather than the Arrow, is measuring the bastard for a coffin for touching her. The rest of me is pulling Stupid Ollie out of his closet. One thing at a time, Queen. Can't kill him if he kills you first.

"I don't understand?" I cock my head and try to look stupid. I'm not sure how effective it is because he's shaking his head at me.

"You've got some wicked moves for a playboy."

I snort, because they weren't good enough to get away, were they? "My bodyguard insisted I learn a few moves after we got caught in that riot Blood started."

He laughs. "You're also pretty buff for a guy who's never seen a gym."

I shrug. It's not something I've ever really thought about, though clearly I should have. "I work out at home."

"Very funny, Mr. Queen." He shakes his head again. "You're a puzzle, Mr. Queen and I hate puzzles."

And I hate being puzzled over. It doesn't help that I'm wearing most of my secrets as I stand here. I'm hoping he doesn't recognize the Bratva tat, because that could really mess things up. The Oliver that earned it is a lot closer to the one who hunts in the darkness and I don't want this man getting close either on his own. Not while I'm stuck down here.

A rope ladder falls over the side and I look up at Mr. Smirk. He waves at it.

"Climb. It's time to reassure your mother that you're still alive. She pays handsomely for the privilege, so I hate to disappoint her."

I climb the ladder, because a chance to make contact, even with my mother, is something I have to take. One of the men patrolling the rim jumps into the pit and goes to stand next to Sin. He doesn't lay a hand on her, but I understand the unstated threat he represents.

Mr. Smirk is chattering as though he's on stage. He's full of the grudge he and his men have against me and my family. Given the number of times his men have come up short against me and Malcolm, I suppose he has more right to the grievance than most of the people looking for someone to blame. I listen with half an ear as I study the route he's taking me along.

There are windows along the second story level and most of them are still glass, which confirms that we're still deep within the plant, otherwise there wouldn't be a single pane left. The angle tells me it's a west-facing wall and only a little past noon. The clock tower spire is just visible through the last set of windows, which tells me where I'll have to aim for when we get the next chance.

They've made a kind of booth out of white canvas and there's a chair with the newspaper sitting in the middle. I suppose they've been dragging me into and out of this thing since they took me, letting her see that I'm still alive by the fact that my hair and beard are growing. It's not going to take too much longer before I start to look like the scarecrow they pulled off the island. I sure feel like him.

"We're going to make a video for your mother, this time, rather than simply take your picture. She's been asking to speak to you so this will have to suffice."

Mr. Smirk takes a pad out of his pocket and writes something down. He's clearly enjoying whatever it is, because I can hear him humming as he writes. He looks over at me and writes some more.

Tearing off the page he comes and hands it to me. "You'll read this first. Verbatim, Mr. Queen. If you fail, our young guest will get a lesson in behavior modification."

What he's written is ugly and he's calculating that hearing me read it myself will make more of an impression. I'm sure it will, but it's not my mother who most worries me. It's going to upset Felicity and Thea, and it's going to piss of the rest of the team. Sara especially.

Sara knows my endurance. She knows I can do this if I have to and to protect Sin I will. Since I'm just coming back from Malcolm's attentions I'm not anxious to go through it again, but I can do it and survive.

If he lets me send a short message, that will help. I can phrase it so my mother won't catch it, but Sara and Felicity will know. And that will be enough.


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moira has mail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Moira

I've been looking at pictures of Oliver. Not the ones they've sent. There have been so few personal shots taken since he returned, I'm angry with myself for letting that happen.

When he came home, Oliver was so skittish I didn't even think about pointing a camera at him. There's the shot from his first Christmas back, all four of us outside the library. Then I have some of the photos taken for their engagement and I find the most comfort from them.

Ironic, I know, to find comfort in seeing Oliver so completely in love with a woman who will hate me forever. The public photos, the ones they sold to the magazine are beautiful, and conventional. But there were private ones, candids that were taken while the formal ones were being set up, and those are so open, so sweet. So much what I wanted for him, and I almost destroyed it.

They're late sending the picture. It's almost midnight and they've never been this late so I'm an utter mess. Thank God there's no one else here to see me.

My email pings and I open it. The attachment is larger than usual and I'm both excited and afraid. It's a video and I click to open it even though, yes it is something I've downloaded off the Internet and yes! I do want to open it!

Oliver is sitting in the chair as usual, but this time he's awake and wearing only his underwear, which I don't understand. He holds up the newspaper and points to the date, then he puts it down and picks up a sheet of paper. As he begins to read it, I feel the blood drain from my face.

"My name is Oliver Queen. These gentlemen have asked me to read the list of consequences that will befall me should you stop paying them. First: they will beat me with whips that have sharp metal points at the tips. Second: they will burn my skin with heated knives and other pieces of metal. Third: They will pull my finger and toe nails. Fourth: they will break my bones, beginning with the joints. My neck will be the last bone they break."

My heart is pounding and I can barely hear his words over the roaring in my ears. Oliver. My beautiful boy.

He puts the paper down and looks directly into the camera. "I know I've been a towering trial to you, Ma. The wages of sin and all that. I know I have to face that you're done with me, but you should know I can see your side."

The image freezes and his voice is cut off and then a message appears. "So long as you keep paying, he won't have to endure any of that. If you're even late, the next time you see him we'll have begun with the first on the list."

I make the transfer immediately, even though the payment isn't due until tomorrow's picture. I shouldn't have shown them how much their threats upset me, but this is Oliver. Thea is right that I have done badly by him, but how do I get us, him especially, out of this mess without making things worse?

I play the video over again, watching him. When he stops reading and puts the paper down, I freeze the picture. He's scruffy and worn, but there's something in his eyes that I don't understand.

It's not resignation. He's not giving up. But he's not really affected by the list of horrors they've had him read, which puzzles me. The cruelty of what they're threatening stops my heart, but Oliver reads it as though it were an ordinary to-do list, not anything that touches himself.

And then I realize that I'm seeing my son without a shirt for the first time since he was rescued. The marks I can see are more angry than I'd have expected for being two years back. The knife wounds the doctor told me about look more like burns from here. And there are other marks I hadn't remembered from the hospital's diagram, some of which look like bullet wounds.  
According to the records from the hospital, his back was covered with welts and burns as well as tattoos. I'm almost frightened to see what it looks like now. I hate that I never asked, never tried to discover, what happened to him on that thrice damned island, so I have no way to judge what I'm seeing and what I'm missing.

And what was Oliver doing while he was away after the quake? I didn't hear from him again until he came back in time to stave off the total take-over of QC. Was he involved in something then that left him with these marks? Why did I never ask?

I let my guilt over my secrets keep me from pressing him on his. I'm furious with him all over again, but I know it isn't just his fault. I let the 'professionals' tell me I shouldn't press him until he was ready to talk and then never made time for him to be ready.

Once this is over, once I get him safely back, he and I are going to have to talk. I should have come clean when the trial was over. I should have done it before I paid off Thea's doctor, before I began my campaign. I won't let myself duck out of it again. And I won't let him slide, either.

The money isn't the issue. We paid out at least that much when he peed on the cop. The fact that Oliver could think I would surrender him to those beasts, that goes beyond the pale.

And then I think over what he actually said and I wonder why he phrased it that way. He's never called me Ma like that, even as a child. Towering trial? Wages of sin? If there's a message here, and there must be, I can't see it. But maybe the message isn't for me.

I reach for the phone as the lights go out.


	9. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moira has an uncomfortable chat with the Canary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Sara

Sin's missing. I never should have told her about Oliver being gone. She's fond of Thea and she knows Oliver and I have a history. I should have seen that she'd take it upon herself to actively hunt for him.

Felicity isn't as alarmed as I am, but I can understand that Oliver has her whole attention. Thea, too. Roy's worried, but he's more worried about Thea.

I understand that he's been gone for three whole weeks and Sin only got lost yesterday. I just know something's happened to her and I feel responsible. If this is what happens when you have kids, I'm not doing it.

We were planning to have John hood up and go see what he could shake loose from Moira, but I want to try. John's a good guy and he knows that even though they're currently at odds, Moira is still Oliver & Thea's mother. He wouldn't be willing to do anything but shout at her. I'm not so dainty, especially considering she salvaged the Gambit the way she did.

Felicity and I duel silently over his head and then she nods. "I think it might be better if Sara takes this one," she tells John. "Moira won't be focused on Oliver, the way she was before and we don't want to get her thinking about who actually is the man in the hood."

I know that there are risks to bringing my leather alter ego into this game. Most of the criminal class we spend our nights thumping on know that the Arrow and Black Canary are on the same team, but what will happen when Moira links us? And will my involvement in Oliver's disappearance, again, start my dad looking at his assumptions about the Arrow's identity? Too many variables to even guess.

Digg looks at me. After a moment of reading the inside of my skull, he nods and I know he understands why I'm doing this. "I'll drive," is his only comment.

Roy looks at me and then at Thea. "You think she might have left something at the clock tower that would tell where she'd been looking?"

"I don't know."

"I'll go by and look around. See what I can see."

Thea is looking alarmed at the idea. With Oliver missing and now Sin, for Roy to talk about looking into her disappearance has to make Thea a little crazy. But Felicity has the answer again.

"I think looking is good, but you'll wear a comm and we bug your boots. Just in case. If we'd bugged Oliver's shoes, we'd have found him by now."

Roy is smart enough to know an ultimatum when he hears one. Thea helps him with the comm and the bug, which helps her feel better. Then he leaves and Digg and I go on our way.

"I'll go in the back and stand by the panel," Digg says as we drive. "Comm me when you're ready to go in and I'll cut the alarm and the lights."

I nod. It's a risk to do it this way, because if Moira or anyone thinks to check the system, Digg's codes would be there. Once again reading my mind, Digg shakes his head.

"I know Oliver's codes as well as Moira's. I can use his or hers to turn the system on or off, probably hers."

"His." I tell him. "She'd know who would have hers, which would include you."

He shrugs and nods. "His, then."

There's a fraught silence and I know what he wants to ask, but doesn't know how. Will we get him back? What kind of shape will he be in, 'cause keeping him from Felicity for this long would take something extreme?

And while I know how much we all want to believe that he'll be back and he'll be fine, I also have to face that he might already be gone. But in the back of my mind is still the memory of seeing him on Ivo's ship that first time, like a ghost from a watery grave. And again, coming back here to find him already, still trying to save the world with his bare hands and a pair of friends.

"Do you think she knows anything useful?" Digg asks, apparently deciding to go with hope.

"She's hiding something behind that damned firewall if Felicity still can't get at the files behind it." I know it's wearing on her that she can't get into Moira's computer and if I can't get into it, we'll have to see if Thea can get Felicity into the house to try it directly.

It's just midnight by the time I'm in place. I click my comm and Digg clicks back twice, indicating he's in position. I wait for the time to be right to go in.

Moira's pacing a bit. That's good for me, but is it bad for Oliver? She's been the ice Queen for the last three weeks with no cracks in her facade on the campaign, but what about the private woman?

Something calls her back to the computer and after a few minutes a video plays. It's Oliver. I can't hear what he's saying, but he has today's paper when it starts.

"He's alive, John," I whisper, but I doubt she'd have heard me if I'd shouted in her ear right now.

"Thank God." I hear him and then a click as he switches channels to tell Felicity.

Moira does something with the computer that looks like a bank transfer and then slumps in her chair. I'm about to signal Digg when she goes back to the video and watches it again, stopping it half way.

I've never studied his skin before. It always felt invasive to stare, studying the residue his life has left on his body instead of looking him in the eye. I don't like being reduced to an object to be studied either, so I'm kind of uncomfortable with doing it to Oliver even now, in spite of the fact he won't know anything about it.

I'm guessing this is probably the first time Moira has seen what he looks like now. I have to hope that she doesn't recognize his Bratva tat, but that's water over the dam now. As she reaches for the phone, I decide my moment has come.

I whisper "Now!" and the lights go out.

"It would be better for you not to touch that phone, Mrs. Queen."

Moira gasps and spins around in her chair. Her hand moves to close the laptop.

"Step away from the desk, Mrs. Queen. Do not touch the computer."

Moira puts her hands up, but she doesn't move away from the desk.

"Away. From. The desk." I repeat.

She shakes her head. "I don't know you. I don't trust you. That's My Son. I'm not playing with anyone I've never met. Not with his life."

I snort and applaud, slow clap. "Bravura performance. Just the right amount of fury and sincerity. Have you been practicing the 'concerned mother' routine for long?"

The outrage on her face would have been comical were the situation different. But it's not, and she's never told the truth without a lie in there somewhere. I want to punch her, but that's not the way to get information from her.

"You know who has him. Where are they? ... Where. Are. They?"

She crosses her arms and says nothing. She forgets that her chair has wheels. I push the chair away from the desk with my foot and she slides across the floor almost to the wall.

I restart the video and turn the sound on again. Listening to Oliver's voice calmly list the punishment he's been told to expect if she stops paying makes me sick. Then I hear him passing on his message.

I'm grateful Sin is there, as safe as she can be in that kind of situation. I'm dying to know what happened to his suit, but I'm betting it has something to do with her capture. And with the bruises on his ribs.

Moira surges to her feet and I deploy my Bo stick to keep her back. I take the thumb drive Felicity gave me and I plug it into the computer. I find the video file and search her email for other messages from the same sender. There are twenty others and once the video copies I download all those files and install the backdoor Felicity devised before I disconnect the drive.

Moira's face is stony, her eyes are empty. She makes no attempt to stop me, which kind of surprises me, given her earlier outrage. "Have they asked for anything?"

"One hundred thousand to be deposited to a designated account each week." Her voice is flat, like her eyes.

"You made the deposit early, then." I say, considering.

"You saw the warning. I won't risk being the cause of that."

And now, damn her, she looks just like Oliver when he wants to hide his feelings, hide his fears. Felicity was on about how much alike they are and I still don't know how much stock I put in it, but I don't want to kill her anymore. Or at least not as much as when I came in. Talk about her own worst enemy!

But I still have to ask. "Why didn't you look for him when you found the Gambit? Why did you just raise the yacht and leave it at that?"

She makes a sound that's half sob half laugh. "I've spent a lot of time asking myself that question," she says, looking at something only she can see, hand over her mouth. "I was focused on leverage against Malcolm for Thea, so when they showed me pictures of the wreckage before they raised it, it never occurred to me that anyone could have survived that kind of disintegration, especially in that kind of storm. Part of me has been taking comfort from that these last weeks. My son seems remarkably hard to kill, but, God!, I wish the universe would just stop trying so hard!"

The last thing I expected was to find it hard not to smile. She's right on both points. He's hard to kill, however the universe keep trying. But it keeps failing, too, and that's more comfort than I expected, too.

"Don't bury him yet." I tell her. She nods, a little surprised she's spoken out loud. "Turn around and count to 20."

She turns and I click the comm.

"On it." Digg says in my ear and I'm gone.


	10. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sin's point of view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Sin

They take Queen and send this big, ugly guy with this big, ugly gun to keep me company. Queen sees the guy and sees that he isn't doing anything but sitting near me. I can tell he isn't happy going with them, though he doesn't make an issue of it. But he's measuring the idea

So Big Ugly decides he wants to chat, show off how big a man he is. "Can you believe that punk? Thinking he's some kinda special 'cause his Mommy's running for Mayor!"

I don't say anything. I just sit on my chunk of concrete and watch the other guy pace back and forth along the edge up there. Apparently Big Ugly thinks this means he should keep spewing.

"We ain't gonna do anything to him, unless his Mommy stops paying us. Looking at him, I gotta wonder if he likes it rough, y'know? Somebody put some serious stripes on him, some more recent than the others too."

Which makes me wonder what Big Ugly does with his free time. Not that I want to find out. Aaaaand! he's still talking.

"We got a special kinda whip, just for him. It's got like a dozen long leather strips and they each got this pointy metal barb at the end. Seen something like it used on a guy once. Drew blood first shot."

Big Ugly's in his happy place at the thought, but I'm trying to keep from showing how sick he's making me feel. I try shutting out everything else he's saying, but it's hard. I can't help thinking that they have no idea what they're getting themselves into.

I know from something Sara said that those 'stripes' that excite Big Ugly so much happened because Queen was rescuing Thea. She wasn't specific about how it happened, but she was chopping up an Indiana Jones type of whip as she said it so I drew my own conclusions. Queen and his sister didn't figure in any of the news stories of how the Arrow helped take down the resurrected Malcolm Merlyn, but I figured the Bird had been there helping out.

Now that I've seen him the next thing to naked, I'm starting to wonder. Sara has a lot of scars she won't talk about and Queen stands there daring you to look at his and even while I'm trying not to stare, I can't help seeing what I see. Like Sara, he's been through hell learned to deal. If these guys think they're going to get away with any of this, they're out of their tiny minds.

Queen comes back and I'm struck by how stupid they are if Big Ugly is anything to go by. He's so clearly an alpha-class predator and they're treating him like some big, dumb house cat. He stands at the edge as the guy in the suit waves Big Ugly up.

Big Ugly tries to get in Queen's space but Queen just steps around him and comes down the ladder. He looks at me and I nod, all cool here. He nods back and goes over to that bar and does pull ups.

The men who'd been walking around the edge of the pit while Queen was gone move off and are replaced by others. They keep wearing their masks, but they have to know Queen, and I, have seen their bare faces, so I have to wonder why they keep it up.

They aren't fooling me. I know I'm expendable once they decide they don't need me to use against him. I'm sure Queen reached that conclusion before he let them force him back in here.

For the next few hours, Queen alternates between pull ups, walking around the pit and random wall push ups. Big Ugly is on rim watch and he follows Queen around as he moves. Queen is totally ignoring him, but Big Ugly seems to be getting off on whatever it is he thinks he's doing.

I'm tired enough to be drowsy, even though I keep feeling like I ought to be watching Queen's back. I must have closed my eyes for longer than I'd thought because I'm suddenly being swept under Queen's crouching body as I hear something pouring over us. He hisses in my ear and I hear Big Ugly laughing like a loon.

I can see steam rising from the floor. They've poured boiling water over his back. I at least have a tee shirt on, but he's covering me, protecting me. Gonna be a toss up, we get out of here, whether it's me or Bird punches him for this stupidity.

I try to move, but he tightens his hold. Whispering in my ear he says, "There's still more water in the barrel. Wait." Breath. "Next time they take me, I'll get the guards away from you and you run. Verdant, Lance, anyone." Breath. "They can't kill me and get their money, you not so much."

I nod. Queen shifts sharply as the rest of the water hits him from a different angle. Only him, damn it! I want to scream at him because he's the one I was trying to rescue, and wow did I fail at that.

As he straightens, I say, "Bird gonna kill me."

He shakes his head and says, "Me."

There's some laughter and back slapping beyond the edge of the pit. Big Ugly looks smug, but it's wasted because Queen isn't paying any of them the least attention. He's moving around the pit, shifting his shoulders as he tests what hurts, making sure things still move.

The suit comes and stands by the edge of the pit. "You have excellent reflexes, Mr. Queen. Your hearing is also impressive."

Queen turns and looks up at the suit with a shrug. What can he say? The suit has suspicions he hasn't shared with the rest of the class, I think. I don't understand his need to keep poking the tiger like this, though. It's stupid, especially if he thinks he actually has the Arrow trapped here.

"You should rest now, Mr. Queen," the suit says. "You're going to need it. Soon."

And that tells me all I need to know. I hate having to do what he's told me to, but they're not as concerned as they once were about whether his mother will keep paying them, so I have to get out of here when he buys me the chance. Or he won't get out of here at all.

Queen looks at me when the suit leaves, whistling as he goes. I sigh, and he gives me a half smile. I pull myself into a small ball, leaning against the lump of concrete I'd been sitting on before and Queen sits cross-legged in the middle of the floor, where he won't accidentally brush the wall with his back. And we wait.

It hasn't been a full six hours, and certainly not a full 24 from the first time they took him, when the suit returns to the edge of the pit. I look up at him while Queen stays where he is. The suit clears his throat. Queen ignores him.

"Mr. Queen! Time for another performance for your mother, Mr. Queen."

The ladder comes down again before Queen stands. He's deliberately slower than before and I wonder what's show and what's real here when he pins me with a glance. All show then.

I stand. Big Ugly bumps Queen as he moves to come down the ladder. The fool is too taken up with how clever he is to realize death has looked him in the eye. And then they're gone.

I sit on my chunk again and this time Big Ugly decides to push into my space a little more. Perfect. Because when Queen starts his diversion, I'm determined to keep this creep from getting his jollies at Queen's expense.

I realize what's happening before Big Ugly. The seconds that buys me means I'm able to grab his gun from him before he tightens his grip up and I slam the butt into his knee from the side. It knocks him down and I slam the butt into his head. Twice to be sure he won't get up.

And I'm gone like the man told me. I wish it didn't feel like such a betrayal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really miss Sin.


	11. Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity sees the video.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Felicity

Digg and Sara rushed down the stairs. "I got all the emails they'd sent her," Sara said, holding out the thumb drive. Felicity took it and plugged it into the computer in front of her.

"I also installed your backdoor." Sara added, as Felicity opened the drive. "The largest file is the video they sent her just before I got there."

Felicity opened the file and hit play. It wasn't a surprise to Sara, and while Digg hadn't seen the video, he'd heard the audio over the comm. Felicity sat back and let his voice roll over her.

It took a moment for what Oliver was actually saying to register. She heard a small whimper and it wasn't until she felt Sara's arm around her that Felicity realized that she'd made the sound. When the warning played, Felicity pushed the chair away from the desk and moved deeper into the lair.

Digg wanted to hit something. Ideally whoever had put those words into his friend's mouth and then recorded him. He looked at Sara who was looking queasy, but every bit as angry.

After about five minutes, Felicity came back. Her face was wet, but her jaw was set. She sat down at the computer and started the video over.

"He sent us a message," Felicity said as she watched Oliver speak. "We need to pick out the things that are part of that and figure what he's trying to tell us."

"'Wages of sin'." Sara said.

Felicity nodded. "He would have wanted you to know she was there."

"But, the rest of the quote..." Digg said.

Felicity shook her head. "This is Oliver. He probably had to come up with something pretty quickly that he was sure we'd recognize."

"'Towering' came first," Digg said.

Felicity looked at him and them at Sara.

Sara shrugged. "The only tower I can think of him associating with Sin would be the old clock tower she crashes at sometimes. He'd know from before that I'd know where it was."

Felicity nodded, grinning. "That makes sense."

"'Face' and 'side' are probably part of the clock references," Digg said, thoughtfully. "Maybe he can see the face of the clock, or the side of the tower?"

Felicity began typing and the aerial view over the clocktower appeared on the second screen. There were several abandoned industrial plants and warehouses surrounding the tower. They ranged from small office type buildings to multiple building compounds.

"What worries me the most is the 'done with me' part." Diggle frowned at the still image of the warning that ended the video. "This is the first video they sent, based on the other file sizes. Catching Sin may have changed something in their plans for Oliver in a way that makes him think this is moving to their end game."

Coming back to the first screen, Felicity opened all the other attachment files. Working their way back from last to first, she understood part of what was worrying Digg and felt a quick jolt of panic that they might be too late.

Sara looked at the pictures and said. "I'll bet he made a break for it. One way they might punish him for that would be to take his clothes."

"But why keep him drugged for this amount of time and then stop?" Felicity asked.

"I'm betting he hasn't been drugged for the whole time he's been gone," Sara said. "It would be risky to keep dosing him unless they had him on a constant drip of some kind. Plus, they'd have to get food and water into him somehow."

Felicity nodded, looking at Oliver and realizing that hair growth was really the only change. His face was not sunken and the body she'd seen in the video was still recognizable as the one she'd cuddled up to in bed. He had to be crying for a shower, but otherwise he looked remarkably good for being gone so long.

So, chances were Sara was right and he'd made a break for it. "I wonder if he saw something?" Felicity offered. "If they'd kept him drugged and isolated, they'd probably been wearing masks in his presence. When Malcolm took me from that one building, the men he'd killed weren't wearing the masks they had been when they took me. Granted, they'd made sure I covered my head when they came into the room, but I just wonder."

"Makes sense," Digg said. "You wouldn't wear a mask if you had to be out where the public might see you, after all. If he saw some of their faces while he made his break, they wouldn't care as much about keeping him contained as before."

"Which would play into the idea of shocking Moira into paying more, more often, by telling her that they wouldn't do these horrible things to her son if she just gave them money." Felicity looked a little pale and shivered as she spoke.

"So, basically, Oliver is telling us he expects them to ... make a move against him soon." Sara said, eyes narrowing. "So we need to narrow down the search area."

Felicity's fingers danced across her keyboard as she set searches in motion, hacking databases from all levels of the city and state so that she could winnow out at least a smaller subset of choices. Sara looked across at Digg. Who looked at his watch.

"What if we send Roy and Thea up into the tower with comms and binocs?"

Felicity looked at her watch and looked back up at Digg. "Verdant closes in about a couple of hours. Let me see what I can do by then and we can ask Roy what he knows about the area from when he was there looking for Sin."

Sara nodded. "I should probably go up and lend a hand at the bar. I need to be doing something and punching things isn't going to help right now. None of the right things are within reach."

Digg nodded. "I'll be up in a bit and make a circuit of the parking lot, just to be sure."

Felicity suspected that Digg had something he wanted to say to her, but she was afraid it was going to be about the video. She didn't want to think about what might be happening to Oliver at that moment, or that no matter how fast she typed and how ruthlessly she drove the data, she wasn't going to be able to find the answers in time to spare him. It wasn't until she felt tears dripping onto her fingers that she realized she was crying.

Digg sat down next to her and turned her chair towards him. "While you were missing, Oliver did everything he could to find you. We both know that Moira was the reason he had to play it the way he did, right? Moira and Malcolm. No matter why these people took him, he has so much more to live for now than at any other time in his life. He has you and he will fight to get back to you."

She kept her head down, looking at something only she could see. "It's like listening to Malcolm all over again," she said in a whisper. "He was very specific about what he was going to do to make Oliver scream." A soft snicker and she continued, "I told him he was delusional which was when he taped my mouth shut."

Digg planted a kiss on the top of her head. "Moira said something this evening that you didn't hear. It was because Sara asked her why she'd stopped looking once she'd found the Gambit. She said that the salvagers had shown her pictures of the wreckage and she'd been sure no one could have survived that. Then she said 'My son is remarkably hard to kill.'"

Felicity looked up at him. "And she has no idea how many people have tried it, either. Herself included. I hope she's right about him this time."

"He's stronger now that the two of you are together," Digg told her. "Before, with the Hood, it was all about the mission. He spent 5 years I don't want to think about becoming that weapon to accomplish that mission and that was the sum total of his existence."

Felicity remembered that man and how angry he'd been when she'd locked the lair doors, trying to make him rethink what he was planning to do to a bad man who was also the father of a young boy. She'd been surprised by the harsh voice and the anger on his face, but she hadn't feared him. She was probably the only person in the city who wasn't at least a little nervous about the Vigilante, but she knew he'd never harm her.

Digg remembered the night she'd joined the crusade, the first night they'd worked together to save Oliver's life. He hadn't wanted her to stay involved with the madness because he was sure it would get her killed, if not worse. Looking back, he wondered how he hadn't seen.

"Until the night she shot him. The instinct that brought you on board as a witting part of this," Digg waved his hand at the lair around him. "That was when things started to shift for him. The mission was still paramount, but it wasn't as narrow anymore. Because Oliver can't travel in a straight line to anything, it's taken all this time to get him to where you two were headed from the moment he brought you that laptop."

Felicity smiled a little crookedly.

"We brought him back," Digg waved his hand between them and she took hold of it and squeezed it. "But you're the reason he's stayed. You've never let him slide, and you've never let him down. You've held this team together for him, for us, and we'll keep on going until we bring him home again. Because that's what we do. We keep him as safe and whole as we can, so he can keep doing what makes him who he is."

"I've always known that the mission could take him from me." Felicity whispered. "Any night could be the one. But unlike his mother, I'm not ever going to surrender him to the dark without fighting to the last. Because he has his mission and I have mine."

"I stopped betting against you a long time ago," Digg said, standing up. "The process might have been glacial, but glaciers are unstoppable forces of nature, and anything that tries to impede their progress will get ground to bits. I don't aim to be one of those fools."

Felicity laughed and if it was a little watery neither of them cared. She turned back to her computers and set to work finding where they were hiding Oliver from her. After three weeks of bloodying herself on this or that roadblock, having a specific area to comb was a relief.

She searched the tax rolls, to see who owned what. She combed power company records, to see who was using what and how often. She hijacked traffic cams and whatever other video sources she could bend to her will and ran the facial recognition software to see if any of the men Thea had identified could be seen.

The first pass through the tax rolls had been chaotic, given the mess of abandoned/bankrupt/flipped sales that had shuffled real estate in the Glades since the quake. There were shell companies and holding companies interspersed with a handful of start-ups. She set an army of bots loose on the lists of corporate boards and owners to sort the wheat from the chaff, the real from the fictional.

While that was working, she took a second look through the power company's records, looking for billing names and addresses to cross-reference with the results of the tax bots' searches. And then she started a search through their power consumption patterns for that area as well as for the Glades as a whole.

She also started searching for wi-fi signals from the area. She also launched a search for phone numbers registered to addresses purported to be within the search area. Also, thinking that there had to be some way of feeding the people guarding Oliver, she started tagging the pizza delivery and other fast food joints within a radius five blocks larger than her original parameters. Then also added liquor stores and bars.

It would take time for the scans to run. She knew that the automated search bots would comb through all the data faster than she could ever do by hand, but that didn't mean she didn't want to shout at the computer. To keep from messing up what she'd put into motion, Felicity made herself stand up and move away from the desk.

She moved aimlessly at first, touching the various exercise devices Oliver routinely used as she passed them. She came. finally, to stand in front of the glass case with his leathers standing ready and waiting for his return. Opening the case, Felicity buried her face in the jacket, inhaling deeply the smell that was uniquely Oliver.

It was almost funny how addictive that smell had become. She could only sleep wearing one of his tees now and being alone in her bed was utterly unnatural. Finding Oliver and bringing him home was the only outcome she could even consider to this madness.

The computer pinged and she went back to the battlfield she knew best.


	12. Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sin picks up the story again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Sin

Queen must be putting up one hell of a fuss, because I'm able to get out of the building without running into a single man. I make my way to the far side of the plant and climb the chainlink fence, but I don't draw a full breath until I'm at least 3 blocks away. It takes me a moment more to get my bearings and figure out where I am.

I figure the quickest way to get him help is to get to Verdant. It's dark, so the club should be open by this time. If not, I'll just make a bigger fuss until somebody comes to see what's up.

I make sure I know where to turn and how far to go. I know I'm going to have to be able to lead people back to the plant so they can get him out. It's harder than I expected it to be in the dark.

It figures that by the time I get there, the line to get in is half way around the block. I wiggle past the pretty people waiting there, figuring that if I can get to the bouncer, he can get me Sara. Or Roy. Or Thea. Somebody.

Except there's this jerk half-way up the ramp who wants to be a big man. He grabs me by the back of my shirt and tries to throw me down. I'm too twisty for that, but he's still not letting me go.

"Stupid punk! The end of the line is back that way. You're not even legal anyway!"

I get a good hit with my knee and he crumples like a tissue. Unfortunately one of his buddies has moved in front of me and he isn't going to let me past without making an issue of it.

"Hey, punk! Who do you think you are?" and he slams his fist into my stomach. I go down on my knees and he pulls back his leg to kick me. But before he can swing at me a hand pulls it all the way back and the guy goes down hard.

I look over and I see Queen's driver, Diggle. He's looking at me like I'm the best thing he's ever seen. I slide through the railing and he helps me down.

"Come with me."

I follow him to the kitchen entrance, which is where I should have thought to go in the first place. I blame it on being tired and a little crazy.

"Wait here a second," he tells me. As I stand there surrounded by food, I remember how long it's been since I've eaten.

He's only gone a moment and Sara's with him when he comes back. She wraps me in her arms and nearly cracks my ribs. And then she stands back and shakes me hard, once.

"What the hell were you thinking? Never go off like that without letting someone know what you're doing! Losing two people is not better than one!" Then she hugs me again.

"I know! I know! I'm so sorry. I didn't think about it until they caught me, and then it was too late."

"Do you know where he is?" Diggle asks me.

I nod. He looks at Sara and raises his eyebrows. Sara looks at me and then at him and shrugs. I figure they don't know I've figured out who Queen really is.

"I figured out who he is." I tell them, being careful not to speak too loudly. Looking at Sara I say, "They treated him like some stupid, lazy house cat when anyone with eyes could see he's more tiger than tabby. And then there's the scars."

She nods and looks at Diggle, who shrugs. "This way," he says and gestures at the back of the kitchen.

Sara grabs a couple of slices of pizza as she comes and passes one to me as we walk. Diggle presses buttons on the door lock and the door opens on a metal stairway. He motions me ahead of him and then waits for Sara to follow before shutting the door behind him.

I never knew Verdant had a basement. But I can see why they don't advertise it. It's more than a little crazy to see what they've got going on down here and nobody up there has any idea.

The blonde sitting at the computers looks up as we come down the stairs. She looks at me and smiles broadly. "Sin! Thank God you're alright!"

And I come apart like a smashed toy. She's Queen's fiancée and I left him behind, but she's glad I'm okay! She's got her arms around me while I cry and I try to tell her how sorry I am and how messed up it is that I'm here and he's not and she stops me with a squeeze.

"Don't think like that!" she tells me. "He told you to go and you did. That's good. It means he only has to worry about what happens to him. They can't hold you as hostage, so he can make a break if he sees a way."

Over my head, Sara says, "Felicity, show her the aerial picture you were looking at before and see if she can show us where she was."

Felicity pulls up an image on one of the monitors. My clock tower is right in the center, but all I can see around it are roofs. Small roof, large roofs and I'm kinda lost.

I must look as lost as I feel. A few keystrokes and Felicity has my tower still in the middle of the picture, but the view is a lot closer to what I'm used to seeing. I shake my head and look at her.

"It's not one of these. They're too close."

"Did you pass the tower coming here?" She turns to the keyboard, hands ready.

"I did, but not directly."

"Okay, so probably this side." And the tower moves towards the bottom of the screen.

It's easier to place myself now. I know everyone is tense because they're relying on me to tell them where he is, but nothing looks right from up here. And it was a but dark when I got out and just none of this look right.

Sara looks at me and says, "It's probably easier to backtrack from Verdant."

The screen changes and now Verdant is in the center of the screen.

"Did you come in from Grell or Adams?"

This is how I should have told them from the start. "I came in from Grell, by way of Hawke back to O'Neil. Then Puckett to Aparo to Papp." I thought for a second. "But I was on Weisinger when they caught me."

The streets I'd been listing now showed like neon green lines along the map. Felicity pulled up the street level view of the area and while the little arrow moved them around the perimeter of the fence, both Sara and Diggle came in closer. There were eight or nine buildings inside the fence and I wasn't immediately sure which building I'd come out of until I saw it.

"That's the one I broke out of," I said, tapping it on the screen. "I don't think they took him out of the building the last time they took him, but I can't be sure ..."

Felicity is nodding and typing so fast I can barely see her fingers. The second monitor suddenly shows what look live live pictures from all four sides of the plant. There's no sign of movement, but there's a bit of light showing from the windows on the west side, the plant side of the building I ran from.

"That's the only building showing any kind of electrical draw and it's a pretty big one," Felicity says, fingers still moving in a blur. "I don't see anything in any of the other buildings. Oops, wait! There's a small draw in the one next to it. No wifi signals at all, but there seem to be a number of cell phones, maybe as many as 20. The emails could be being sent via a phone app, but the video attachment could be tricky that way."

"So we have at least 20 potential hostiles," Digg says, eying the building through narrowed eyes. "Are they all in the one building or are there other phones within the plant boundaries?"

"If there are any phones outside the building they've turned them off," Felicity says. "I would be good operational sense given how easy it can be to track phones if they're on." She cocks her head. "Though turning them off altogether would be smarter. I wonder..."

"I wonder what they did with Oliver's phone?" Sara says, frowning at the screen. "I know you've been monitoring for it since he was taken. Would they have any way of knowing how ... special his phone is without you being aware of it?"

Felicity stops moving and turns to look at Sara with a horrified look on her face. "I try to keep his phone clean, un-Arrowy and all, but I haven't gone through it recently."

"Yeah, but there's still a lot of things that could be damning if they were made public, aren't there?"

Felicity nods, frowning. "The only way to get into some of the clandestine stuff on his phone would be to turn it on inside a blocked room. All you'd need to do is put in a few layers of chickenwire fencing under your drywall, make sure there's a wire run to a ground and so long as your doors are metal and close completely, you're good to go. Windows would screw it up, but if they'd put it into a booth of sorts built inside one of the buildings, they wouldn't want a window anyway."

Sara nods and looks at Diggle. "So they may be expecting my black leather, but Digg could be a surprise. And Roy. Could they use his tracker to find us?"

"Not without taking it outside where I could see it."

"We need to get everyone down here and get a plan together," Diggle says, heading towards the stairs.

He almost gets to the top when the door flies open, almost hitting him. Thea rushes toward him, holding up her phone, while Roy follows her through. They get themselves sorted out after a second and Thea's rushing to Felicity holding out her phone.

"It's my mom, and she wants to talk to you," Thea says in a rush. "They sent another video."

Felicity makes a face as she takes the phone from Thea and puts it to her ear. "Mrs. Queen."

I can't hear what's being said, but I can hear enough of the voice on the other end to know that she's talking fast and she's upset. Felicity goes back to her keyboard, one shoulder holding the phone to her ear as she types. A picture comes up on the third monitor and we're all gasping at the image.

"I can see the picture on your screen." Felicity says to the phone and then the video restarts.

I hear the suit speaking over a screen that warns Mrs. Queen what they'll do if she's slow or stops paying them. "I'm afraid your son has become a good deal more trouble than he's worth. At least at the current rate. Deposit one million dollars and we'll stop. But not until the deposit is confirmed."

The screen changes and shows Queen from behind. He's held suspended off the ground like the X on a treasure map, chains holding his wrists and ankles pulled out to their limit. The whip Big Ugly was so happy about is as brutal as he'd claimed, drawing blood with each stroke, though there are five leather thongs rather than the dozen he'd claimed.

The sound on the video is strange. I can hear the whip as it cuts the air and when it hits Queen. I can hear the hiss and grunt of the man swinging the whip. I don't hear Queen at all.

The camera moves around to show Queen from the front. The look on Queen's face is pure cold murder, but the suit sounds so smug about having him pinned like this, I have to wonder if he's just as stupid as Big Ugly. Keep pushing, fool.

"Smile at the camera, Mr. Queen! Your mother will want to treasure this moment, I'm sure!"

In response, Queen looks away from the camera like he's bored and closes his eyes. His jaw is set and I can see how tense those muscles are. But that's the only sign.

The camera pulls back and returns to the view of the whip cutting into his skin. With the camera closer to the man with the whip, I'm struck by how much more labored his breathing has become. And I realize that he's varying the speed, the power and the angle of each cut, because he seems to be aiming at the few remaining bits of uncut skin, even curling it around Queen's body to strike at his chest as well.

The suit turns the camera so he and Queen are in the picture at the same time. "Remember what I said, Mrs. Queen. We'll progress to the next level before too much longer. While he still has something to give." And the camera zooms in on Queen's shoulders, showing the blood trickling from each cut, down his back.

Felicity puts the phone to her mouth immediately as the image freezes again. "You're not going to pay them! You can't!"

She listens to the voice on the phone. I can only hear noise, but the noise sounds ... annoyed. After a couple of moments, Felicity sighs in relief. Apparently Mrs. Queen is not a fool and can understand that if they've started this, they aren't going to stop because she pays them; they've already decided to kill him.

"So, your ... contact knows this man who's speaking on the video?" Noises. "Oh. Wow." Longer noises. "Yes, we have an idea where they're holding him. We're formulating a plan of attack as we speak." Noises. "No. There's nothing to share as yet." Noises. "We'll contact you as soon as we have him free. And you'll contact us if they send another video." Louder noises. "Good night, Mrs. Queen."

Felicity turns off the phone and hands it back to Roy, who's holding Thea as she cries, then says, "We don't have a lot of time. The time stamp on the email was 20 minutes ago, so we need to figure out what we're going to do and quickly."

Sara's all Bird. "We have to go in smart or we'll lose him. What does she know about the man?"

"Apparently he was Malcolm's head flunky." Felicity says, looking at Sara, then Diggle, "I owe his contacts with her people for his swooping in and stealing me away. And apparently he knew enough of them to engineer this whole fiasco as a revenge on Oliver. He knows, just like Malcolm knew, and he blames Oliver for Malcolm's current condition."

Roy looks almost panicked, but Felicity looks directly at him. "Oliver told you to stop him taking Thea, didn't he?"

Roy nods, still not happy.

"Did he complain about how you did it?"

Roy takes a deep breath and shakes his head. He looks a question at Thea, who kisses him, saying, "There wasn't any other thing you could have done. Don't let the bastard mess with your head from a distance."

Roy gives her a twisted smile and nods, tightening his arms around her.

So, I guess I'm the only one who finds all that confusing, but I put it aside. They talk in glances and half sentences, and I'm only sort of able to decipher what they're planning. I look at the image that ended the video and try to think of something helpful. But there's nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned how much I miss Sin?


	13. Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara takes the story as the move out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Sara

Organizing this attack is harder than I'd realized. Oliver makes it look easy and I didn't appreciate how central his personality is to this team. They're here to keep him alive and they're focused on him in a way I hadn't understood before.

Sin is able to show us the doors she'd seen on her way out of the plant. Diggle and I study the pictures Felicity has been able to generate of the plant's perimeter, based on what the traffic and the other area security cameras showed her, looking for weak spots and traps. There is also the possibility that Malcolm's man might have some League tricks up his sleeve which makes me unhappy.

In the end, we agree that simple is best. I lead, Roy will follow and Digg brings up the rear. Felicity knows she'll be most useful remaining at the foundry with Thea. If only to keep Thea there and out of danger. Oliver will kill me if we rescue him but lose his baby sister.

I put my wig on and come over to stand behind Felicity as she watches the new video again.

"Do you see anything that might help?" I asked.

Felicity turned and I'm surprised to see how shaken she is. "If you catch that man," she waves at the masked man on the screen, "don't hesitate to break lots of bones. If I thought that Oliver wouldn't be more upset by it, I'd just say kill him."

Digg hears us and comes over. "What's up?"

Felicity points to the overturned chair and bucket in the corner behind the man with the camera. Digg looks at me, then back to Felicity. She backs the video up to the point where the camera is pointed at Oliver's face.

When it became clear that we didn't see what she saw she pointed to Oliver's face. "His face is wet. So is his hair. Oliver doesn't sweat like that."

"Why is that bad?" Thea asks as she comes up to join us. I know she can see how upset we are and it's distressing her because she has to figure it means something bad for Oliver.

"Waterboarding." I say, hating the taste of the word in my mouth. "You put a piece of cloth over a person's face, covering the mouth and nose, then you pour water over the cloth and the person feels like they're drowning." Which is an exceptionally cruel and nasty thing to someone who's been through the kind of near-drowning Oliver had with the Gambit. The idea of it makes my stomach churn.

Thea looks at me and then at Digg. "I'm with 'City. Kill the bastard."

"Oliver is our first priority," Digg says, and Felicity nods. "But beyond that, yeah, I won't mourn that one."

I nod back. "I'm going to go in the way Sin came out and once I'm in position, I'll let you know. I don't want to leave this for too long, but once I'm sure Oliver is still there we can move. I don't like how little we know about this place and I like this connection to Malcolm even less."

"I'm all for being as careful as we can." Digg agrees. "Last thing we need is for this to trap the rest of us as well as Oliver."

"Exactly." Felicity says, looking haunted. "There's very little intel available on this property. Not surprisingly it was owned by Merlyn Global until the company was broken up after the quake. It has passed through the hands of multiple shell companies, ending with Sagittarius, which is the company that manufactured Malcom's black arrows."

Digg nods at the connection and I remember him telling me how badly Dark Archer Malcolm had injured Oliver in that encounter.

"Here's the last available set of blueprints. They're three years old, but they'll give you a general idea." Felicity pulls up the schematics on the screen and focused on the building Sin had identified.

"So clearly they, or at least this guy, will expect us to come for Oliver. It may be that this whole thing has been about getting us on their ground and at a disadvantage." I continue. I turn to look over at Sin. "We can give you a comm and some night vision equipment. You can watch from the tower and be sure we're aware if they start something outside while we're inside the building. Will you?"

Sin nods, eagerly. "Yeah. I'll be glad to. I wanna help!"

While Thea goes back up to her office to get her a jacket, Felicity gives Sin a quick rundown on how the comms work.

I take the Ducati and drop Sin as we pass the tower. Diggle follows in the Bentley with Roy. They park in a darkened driveway off Papp that Felicity directs them to and wait for my signal. Once Sin climbs the tower, everyone is in place.

I move silently though the darkened plant. The few remaining street lights didn't reach much beyond the outer rank of buildings, but there's just enough between them and the moonlight for me to make my way to the buildings Felicity has identified as still drawing power. There's very little in the way of light showing now, and I'm not sure whether that's good for Oliver or not.

As I approached there was the smell and sound of a diesel engine that came from a large generator. Which made me think that there was a lot more going on here than we were aware of. There was only one cable, running from the generator into the building opposite the one where all the phones were. I looked for the holding tank and punched a small hole in the bottom, so that the fuel would leak out without instantly giving away our presence and position.

I clicked the comm once to indicate I was in position. I heard Diggle click back twice. From up in the tower, Sin clicked twice.

As I waited for the others to join me, I heard Sin. "I can see you, Bird. Doesn't seem to be anyone else moving outside." Pause. "Wait! I can see the gate sliding open, out onto Papp. There's two guys opening it and there's a little blue car pulling out." Pause. "They're having some trouble getting the gate to track back right. If you hurry, guys, you might be able to get in that way."

I hold my breath. I can see the headlights I assume belong to the car Sin sees. I'm hoping it's just somebody making a beer run and not Malcolm's man making his escape.

Because if Malcolm's man is leaving, I'm afraid of what it means about Oliver. I have to force myself to wait for Roy and Diggle and not race into the building to try to find him. I listen carefully and I hear Sin snicker in my ear, just before I hear Diggle's one click.

I send back my two clicks and begin to move. Roy and I burst into the building almost at the same second. We overcome the twelve remaining men in a ridiculously short burst of action, without even a shot fired.

There are still a couple of them who are capable of speech. My doing because I could see that there was no sign of Oliver here and we need to find him. While Diggle does a sweep of the rest of the building, Roy holds one of the thugs over the pit by his heel.

"Where is Oliver Queen?" I do my best Loud Voice, but I don't seem to be impressing the punk. Maybe it's the vocalizer.

Roy shakes him a little, but the guy doesn't seem to take any of this seriously. Diggle comes back shaking his head. "Found the booth where they made the first video, but he's not there now.

The guy Roy is holding laughs. "That pretty boy wuss! His Mommy's going to make up for all the hell she did to the Glades. We got ours coming. Boss man said we're gonna be rich when she pays up. A million bucks!"

Roy shakes him again and says "You dumbass! She's paid out $300,000 so far. Have you seen any of that? Course not! You wouldn't see any of that million either. You been played, and played good."

Roy apparently is making some sense to the punk, who starts to look aggrieved.

"Where is the man?" Roy demands, shaking the punk harder. "Tell me or I drop you."

The punk has apparently realized how far his head is from the floor of the pit and is starting to look worried. He points out the door we came in and says, "He's over there. The other building. Boss man had him rigged up special before he left."

Roy raps the punk's head sharply up against the wall of the pit and drops him over with the others. Diggle looks at me and I know neither of us is happy with that information. 'Rigged up special' has an ominous sound to it.

"Felicity, do you have anything coming from that other building?"

"Just the same, small electrical draw." She's trying to sound like this is a normal mission, but I can hear how worried she is.

"We're going over."

"Be careful."

We move out.


	14. Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver's perspective.

Oliver

Mr. Smug told me the waterboarding was because of Sin's escape and I'm fine with that. He knows as well as I do that she's going to bring my rescuers. He just doesn't know who he'll be facing.

What bothers me most is that he sent a part of his commentary video to my mother. Which means that Felicity, and the rest of my team, will also have to watch it. The debt I owe this bastard just gets bigger.

The way he has me suspended has put a strain on all my joints. I keep flexing what I can in order to keep from potentially dislocating anything, but the damage from the burns is affecting that and badly. This suspended position also made it nearly impossible to brace for the whip, so I'm mostly glad he's past that part of the program.

It's been more than half an hour since Mr. Smug sent off that video and I've neither smelled nor heard anything from outside this room that makes me think he's preparing for the 'burning with metal' phase of threat. The waterboarding shows that he's willing to improvise, so I'm not taking any great comfort from that. After all, pulling my finger and toe nails would put me out of commission for an unpleasant amount of time. And I can't afford that right now.

The door opens and Mr. Smug is standing, leaning in the doorway.

"I half expected your friends to be here by now," he says, and takes off his mask. I don't recognize him, but I will the next time I see him. "I have an important errand to run and I doubt you'll still be here when I get back, so let me warn you that there was a reason why I had you chained like that in this room. You see, this room is built out of explosives, to be a bomb. And you are the trigger."

He's smiling as he says this and I know he's getting a big charge out of telling me this. So long as he keeps talking, there's a good chance my team will catch him before he escapes, so I'm perfectly willing to let him spin this out.

"You see, if these cables are not held taut, in exactly this position, the room will explode and kill you along with everyone else inside."

He's still smiling. He's still crazy. But that isn't the whole of it. I can feel it.

"I'm guessing you'll try to stop them from freeing you, but you'll have to be quick, because once I close this door the next person through it will trip the timer. And then you'll only have five minutes before the room will explode anyway."

That's nasty. Very diabolical. I'm sure what's left of Malcolm would applaud the idea.

"As much as I would love to stay and watch, I need to pay a visit to your mother on my way out of town. Just to finish what I started with her. I may let her live long enough to hear the explosion, long enough to know that she failed her son."

And I find that as much as I hate my mother for what she has done, the idea that he intends to kill her reminds me that she is still my mother.

"Once both of you are gone, I'll be able to fulfill my master's wish and see his daughter to Nanda Parbat. It was always his intention, though he had hoped to be the one to train her there. The Demon will welcome her in any case. I suspect he feels that your family owes him a debt."

That smug smile is going to be the death of him. I'm going to see to it.

"My master would approve of your sidekicks being the death of you, Arrow. I know I will enjoy reading about and watching the aftermath on TV." As he moves towards the door he adds, "I'll drink to your demise. And when you meet your father in hell, say hello from my master!"

I hear the latch snik shut and his steps diminish into the echoing space beyond. There's rattle as the door to the outside opens and closes and then the sound of a car door opening and closing. After a moment, the engine starts and the car drives off.

And now I can only wait for my team and hope they can warn my mother before that bastard can reach her.


	15. Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's in the other building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Sara

We cross to the other building without seeing any other thugs. The door is unlocked, which makes me a little paranoid, so I wave to Digg and Roy to wait outside and walk quietly into the open space. I wait a moment while my eyes adjust to the even darker interior.

There is a cube of a room, made of pretty raw pine, about 5 yards from the door. It looks to be about 15 feet to a side, though it might be broader on the side I can't see from here. I match the dimensions in my mind with the room in the video of Oliver being tortured and figure I've probably found it.

I'm suspicious because it is so clearly a purpose-built room and I'm not sure if the purpose is just to suspend him in that uncomfortable fashion, or if it has to do with not showing lights over here, or if it has to do with something else altogether. I circle the room carefully. I only have my little pencil flashlight, so I have to be certain that I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing in the narrow light beam.

First thing I notice is that there's something behind the wall covering. I can't believe they would insulate the room in here. Who would they be keeping the sound from?

Coming around to the back I can see the silhouette of a power line attached to a pipe sticking out of the back corner of the room. Which makes it even crazier. Why light a room you didn't have to enclose in the first place? And why are there wires...

That's when I get it. The room isn't simply electrified, it's armed. Now I need to know what the situation is before I open the door, even though there could be somebody in there waiting for us to show up before they kill him.

I find the door and tap on it once. I'm hoping Oliver is conscious enough to hear me so I don't have to shout, though if there's someone in there with him, he may not be able to answer. I wait what seems like hours before I tap again, just a little louder.

"Sara? Don't open the door!" It's Oliver and his voice is hoarse in a way that makes my throat hurt. He coughs and goes on. "The room is a bomb and I'm the trigger. If you open the door the timer starts."

"Okay!" I shout back. Even under these circumstances, it's good to hear his voice.

"Sara! Someone's gotta warn my mom that the guy in the video is going to try to kill her. Warn Security and SCPD." He starts coughing again and it takes him a moment to get it under control.

"On it!" I call back. Into the comm I say, "Felicity? Did you hear any of that?"

"On it!" she says in my ear. "Thea's calling her mother and I'm calling the detail. Can you call your dad?"

"Lemme get outside," I tell her, then shout at Oliver, "I'm going out of the building to call my dad. I'll be right back."

I have a flash of panic as I wait for my dad to answer his phone. I don't want to out Oliver, so I have to be careful how I phrase what I tell him. Digg and Roy watch me, waiting until I can explain.

"Hey, Sweetheart!"

"Hi, Dad. There's going to be an attempt on Moira Queen's life tonight, at the mansion. Momentarily. The guy is one of Merlyn's men and he left the Glades about 20 to 30 minutes ago, driving a light blue sedan. Personally, I suspect he's had ... some of the same training I've had, but I don't know for sure. It will make him very dangerous if it's the case." I can hear a muttered profanity.

"Did our ... mutual friend give you this?"

I look over at the other building and I know I have to tell him. Part of me would be fine with killing them all, but that wouldn't solve anything and Oliver wouldn't like it. There just isn't any way to keep the abduction secret.

"We're involved in a situation and the guy who wants to kill Mrs. Queen is at the heart of it. We need to deal with this part here before I can give you any details, but I saw the guy drive off myself," I add. "I wasn't aware of what he was planning to do, so I didn't even know to try to stop him." Not quite the question he was asking, but I'm hoping it will do.

"Alright. I'll call it in and I'll start out there myself. You let me know about this other stuff as soon as you can."

"I will. Thanks, Dad!"

Digg looks more conflicted than Roy. Roy just looks shellshocked. Digg knows more about what a bitch she's been to Oliver, over and above what she did to Felicity. Roy, I think, is more worried about Thea.

I outline the situation for everyone and Digg pulls an industrial strength flash out of his pack. We go back into the building, as much to reassure Oliver as to reduce the possibility of someone seeing all of us standing where we shouldn't be. I point to the pipe I saw earlier and Digg goes to see what he can with his light.

"I called my dad and he says he'll go out there," I tell Oliver through the door. "Thea warned your mom and Felicity warned the security detail."

"Thank you." He's having trouble catching his breath still and I want to break lots of bones in the minions we took out in the other building.

Still, I can tell he's relieved. I find it almost funny that now his mother's been warned, he's almost completely calm. He's been tortured by people out to punish her for her misdeeds and any second now we could do something stupid that could blow up the bomb he's tied into, but he's not worried for himself.

Digg has found a step ladder that will hold him and he's using it to look at the top of the room. In the beam of his flashlight I can see clearly what I'd feared was there: a host of smaller wires spreading out from the pipe all the way across the top and leading down inside the walls. Each charge in the walls and ceiling was armed and ready to blow.

I take my pencil light and examined the doorframe. If the man has told Oliver the truth, I might be able to see some kind of wires around either the latch or the hinges. There is a magnet, or rather a pair of them, just below the bottom hinge where a wire from the bottom of the wall comes over and a second one leads up the outer side of the frame going back to the top of the cube.

I want Digg's corroboration but I suspect that if we open the door without breaking that link, we could at least get into the room without blowing Oliver up. One step closer to getting out of here and back to Felicity where he belongs.

I look up at the pipe again and it occurs to me to follow it outside. I have to see if I can see where the line goes once it's outside the building. I come back smiling, because I think I know how we can fix this.

Diggle comes back out with me and I point at the way the line goes up and across to the other building. "One of Oliver's exploding arrows would do it. I know I can make the shot. Once the line is cut, we should be in the clear."

Digg looks at the power line and then back at the room where Oliver is waiting. "It might work. I want to take another look at the line as it feeds into the wires in there, just to be sure there's nothing else we're missing."

He looks back at the door where Roy is standing, telling Oliver what we're doing while waiting for us to come back. Waving Roy over, Diggle hands him the car keys. "Oliver's quiver and bow are in the trunk, along with the first aid kit. Bring 'em back with you and make sure there are a couple of the explosive rounds." Roy nods and sprints off.

To me, Digg says "I want to take a closer look at what we can see of the floor. If it were me setting this up, I'd have added a kind of Teller mechanism in the floor that would trigger the bomb no matter what else we might have done to stop it."

My career as assassin didn't cover bombs and mines all that much. Too noisy and too messy for what we were about. But my dad did a stint on the bomb squad while he was single and I've looked at some pretty twisty ways people can blow other people up. Teller mechanisms usually involved a weight setting on the trigger, which meant that a dog could safely walk over a bomb that would kill the man behind.

While Digg is looking at the floor, I have a thought. I call through the door, "Oliver, they used the braided cable to suspend you, yes?"

"Yeah," he calls back. "The cutters are probably out there, or in the other building."

I start sweeping the pencil flash back and forth across the floor, but it's not much help. I tap Diggle on the shoulder and he nods as we swap lights, so he can see the space under the floor more easily. I find the cutters, 2 pairs of them, but I also find another cable leading away from the room.

"Digg?" He must hear the strain in my voice because he comes quickly. I point the light back towards the room so he can see the covered trench that comes from under the back of the room, and the cable coming up out of it twenty feet on back. I wonder if this is what the generator was for and if the hole I punched in it will come back to haunt us now.

Diggle looks at it and starts to walk around the room, looking at the ground this time. "Okay. I think that if we cut the power at the pole and at the generator at the same time, we should be alright. There is a Teller mechanism but it doesn't seem to involve anything beyond the first foot or so inside the door."

I can hear Felicity's breath catch in my ear and I know she's dying to pester us for details. And I suspect we'll get back and find Thea's paced a trench in the foundry floor behind Felicity's chair. Right now, we have to concentrate on getting Oliver out of this trap and safely back to his girls.

"I found two cutters over here. They'll cut the cables they have him suspended with. I think that what we do is, we cut the power, open the door and carefully avoid the bad section of floor. You take one cutter, Roy takes the other and I'll support him while you do. Then you piggyback him out and we quickly get as far away from that room as we can in case it blows anyway."

Diggle nods. "Sounds like a plan." He goes back to the door to explain the situation to Oliver and I go out into the other building to check on our prisoners. I'm not sure how we're going to explain why these guys need to be arrested if we don't admit that Oliver was kidnapped, but I don't want any of them getting away before we decide.

Roy comes back with the equipment and I explain the new wrinkle in the plan. I show him where the generator is and he agrees that I'm the better shot with the bow, so that's settled. We come back as Diggle comes to the door out of the building.

"Okay. He's not exactly thrilled with the risks to the rest of us," Predictably. "but he thinks it should work."

Which is a load off my mind. Oliver has a better handle on group strategy than I do, but he's more careful of his team than I tend to be. Probably because he has less experience working with peers than I have; in the League you carried your own weight. Always.

I wait with the arrow nocked as Roy runs back down to the generator. Once he waves, I draw the bow and fire. The arrow cuts the wire as neat as can be, with the explosive performing as hoped. Roy holds the cable up and away from the generator for just a moment before running back.

We open the door carefully and the room behind it is dark. I prop Diggle's flashlight on the edge of the floor and catch my first glimpse of Oliver since this whole mess started. He looks disheveled and tired, but otherwise in much better shape than we had any right to expect.

But there are dark stains on the floor that look black in the light from the flash, and I know they're blood, his blood. I don't want to think about the way his blood is probably splashed on the walls and the ceiling, castoff from each stroke of the whip. I want to go back over to the other building and make sure that the man who wielded that whip isn't one of the ones I spared.

Now is not the time to indulge in that feral part of me that knows what the whip feels like. We just have to concentrate on getting Oliver out and away from here as fast as we can. We aren't going to be able to finesse this attack either. Neither of these track directly to the Arrow, but the problem is that they keep pointing out to my father at least some of what Oliver is capable of enduring, which will eventually lead Dad to wonder about he possible connection..

I see Digg look at the floor and clench his jaw and I can see that I'm not the only one having trouble focusing. I'm careful where I touch Oliver as Digg and Roy cut the cables suspending him. Digg is equally careful as he steps in front and takes Oliver's weight.

We cross to the other building where the light is better to deal with Oliver's back. My cell rings, my dad calling. I hand Oliver my comm, so he can talk to his girls, and I go outside to take the call.

"Hi. Where are you?"

"I'm at the Queen mansion."

"Is she alright?" I ask.

"She's fine." He sounds a little disgruntled, so I guess her marksmanship has improved. "I got one dead bad guy and one wounded security guy. Do you know where Queen is? She says the dead guy had him kidnapped." Pause. "She showed me the pictures. And the videos."

"We just missed the bastard. It wasn't until we found Oliver that we knew where he was going and why."

"Alright. I'm gonna have to talk to him. Again. We'll meet you at the hospital."

"No. Can you imagine the circus? We'll arrange to get him out to the mansion for the night at least."

"From what I saw, he'll need more than his driver's combat medic care."

"That'll be up to him. I'll call you once we know his ETA."

"Alright."

Oliver looks up as I come back into the building. Digg is standing behind him with a bottle of water and a soft cloth, cleaning Oliver's wounds. "My dad says she's okay. She shot the bastard dead."

"Anyone else hurt?" he asks as Digg's phone chimes. Roy takes the bottle as Digg takes the text.

"French took a round in the calf," Diggle reads, "Rich twisted his knee. Bates and Coffey are on site and Munson and Cross are en route."

Oliver nods again. "I'm guessing a chat with your dad is in my immediate future," he says, looking at me.

"He's seen the videos and the photos they sent your mom," I tell him and I can tell by the way his mouth twists that he's unhappy about that. "He was expecting to meet us at the hospital, but I shot that down. So he'll wait for us at the mansion."

After a moment of silence, Oliver shifts his shoulders and sighs. "It's the most defensible place we can all stay at once," I can tell he's trying to convince Felicity as well as himself. "Plus it's probably best not to keep dragging your dad out to Verdant. I'd as soon he stop associating it with the Arrow." He hands the comm back to me "Felicity wants to talk to you."

I put the comm back in and step back towards the door. "You heard all that?" I ask.

"I did. Mrs. Queen called Thea once your dad arrived. She wants him to go to the hospital too, but we both know that won't happen." She pauses and we both consider the special stubbornness that is a wounded Oliver Queen. "The simplest thing would be to bring everybody back here to Verdant and we'll figure out what's the best way forward."

I think about Sin and Oliver's bike and I know she's right. Plus we have to let my dad know about the scum remaining here for pick up and the bomb squad will need to deal with the room. "We're going to be moving out in a few, so you can send my dad the info about this place. There's a few bodies and a couple prisoners they'll need to deal with as well as the bomb squad."

She makes a small, distressed noise and I walk a little further out into the open, away from Oliver's excellent hearing. "I know you're worried cause he's doing the 'fine' thing, but he's really holding up better than I'd expected, given the havoc the waterboarding is playing with his breathing."

I look back at the three guys and I can see how Oliver's head is down. I tell Felicity, "He's beyond tired, which I think he thinks is the worst of it because he's trying to plan. I suspect they haven't fed him since Sin, which probably means he hasn't had anything to drink either, so he's dehydrated on top of everything else. Plus, he misses his girl."

"I've missed him," she whispers.

I glance back again at Oliver as Diggle pulls a hoodie out of the pack. Oliver's already pulled on a pair of sweat pants and sneaks. "We should be moving out in a minute," I tell her, and pause, trying to find the words. "You know, I was almost sure he was dead. Gone. Not immediately, but pretty soon after, when there kept being no sign. But you ... you knew better. And I'm so glad he has that with you. You both deserve that."

"Couldn't have done it without the Team," she says, still just above a whisper.

Oliver's standing now. I see Roy running off, so I'm guessing he's getting the car. "Let me pass you back to him." I say, smiling. I click to change the channel and say "Sin? Meet me back where I dropped you off."

"Will do!" Sin says.

Handing the comm to Oliver, I say "Felicity will let my dad know where to pick up the trash," I wave at the scattered minions. "I'm going to collect Sin and we'll meet up back at Verdant."

He takes the comm and grabs my hand. "I owe her," he says and I nod.

"I've already read her the riot act about going off on her own and getting caught. But she's still pissed at you over the boiling water."

Oliver gives me a look. "As tiny as she is, that much water would have peeled more than a couple layers of skin off her. No way I was willing to allow that."

Which I knew, of course. Oliver in standard rescue mode. As if he isn't going to lose skin over this, himself.

I think about the fact that he's probably going to need ice on his back as Sin and I ride back to Verdant. I suspect that Thea will be willing to sacrifice a bottle of vodka but I don't know if there are large enough zipper bags to make it work. Felicity surprises me regularly with the number of things she has in the med kit, so I may be wrong there. She's always a step, or two, ahead of all the ways Oliver manages to get hurt, and I have to wish he would stop finding new, and/or even bigger, ways.

Verdant is dark by the time we get there. I pull into the lot and put the bike back where Oliver keeps it. Sin and I go in the alley door and go downstairs.

Predictably, Felicity is three steps ahead of me on the ice pack idea. She not only has the industrial sized commercial packs, she and Thea are duct-taping three of them to the inside of one of Oliver's hoodies. Their surface is probably smooth enough to prevent it abrading his skin and the duct tape covers the edges where the seals might cut him.

They both look up as we come down. I can tell that they've both been crying. He's not quite safe because he's not quite here and they're both still worried about what he's not telling them.

Oliver will always say he's fine, because so long as he can still speak, or at least so long as he can speak to Felicity, he believes he's fine. And of course both Thea and Felicity know better. But Lian Yu taught him that being less than 'fine' is a weakness that can get you killed, so he will always do whatever is necessary to protect the people he loves even if he can only just barely stand.

I look at the hoodie again and suddenly I'm trying to explain it to my dad. "I don't think we want to impress my dad with our access to advanced medical equipment," I say.

Felicity looks at it, horrified. Thea looks like she wants to kick something. I pick it up and hand it to Sin. "Remembering that we need to take this with us when we leave here is now your job. This is all you have to worry about right now. Okay?"

Sin looks at me, puzzled but game. "Okay. I'll make sure."

I start peeling out of my leathers and my wig. Looking at Thea I say, "Do you remember that god-awful vodka Raybate was trying to get you to buy? The freebie we decided not to use to poison the customers with?"

Thea nods, and looks over at Felicity. Who has started rummaging in the magic supplies box. She pulls out a box of gallon-sized zip bags and starts pulling them out.

"One third vodka to two thirds water/ice mixture will keep the mixture cold without melting the ice or freezing the water." Felicity hands three of them to Thea. "Do you have the shaved ice still?"

Thea nods and takes the bags, heading for the stairs. Sin follows, still holding the taped-up hoodie. "Find a garbage bag upstairs and put the hoodie inside it, then put the bag in the freezer until we're ready to go." I call after them. Both Thea and Sin wave in acknowledgement.

Felicity is measuring off strips of duct tape and letting them dangle off the edge of the examination table. I must look as puzzled as I feel because she's explaining. "I should have realized Oliver would need to see your dad and your dad would need to see his back. I think I can do this so that he can have the ice packs close to the skin without putting a lot of extra pressure on him."

Some thought strikes her and she reaches for a sharpie marker and places it on the examination table too. "I fudged the image of the Bratva tat on both videos. I think I can use the marker to similarly confuse what the image is for the few minutes your dad will be looking."

God, she's smart! It never occurred to me that my dad would have to see Oliver's chest if he was going to look at his back. I have to believe that he'd recognize the tattoo for what it is and trying to hide it would be worse than having him see it straight out.

Thea comes back only moments before Roy comes clattering down in front of Oliver and Digg. Oliver is moving more slowly than I'd like, but given that his back looks more like hamburger than skin, the fact that he's moving on his own is pretty amazing. As soon as he steps onto the floor Felicity is in his arms.

She's carefully wrapped her arms around his waist, but he's got her in a bear hug, so it doesn't matter how gentle she's trying to be. He's not concerned for what it's doing to his back. She's his anchor and he needs her as close as he can get her right now.

I can see his lips moving against her hair, but I'm not even trying to hear what he's saying. That's private and they deserve to have that. Especially tonight.

They stand together like that for almost 5 solid minutes before Oliver sighs and relaxes his hold. Felicity stands with her face buried in his chest for a moment longer before she looks up and he starts coughing. I can tell it hurts him as much as it scares her.

Digg helps Oliver to the examination table as his breathing eases. Felicity stands in front of him and unzips the hoodie. The bandaging Digg has done seems both thorough and secure, so we may be able to finesse my dad seeing his back until we get an actual doctor out to the mansion tomorrow.

Still, to be safe, Felicity has the sharpie out. I help Thea assemble the zip bags into a unit with the duct tape as Felicity explains what she plans to a skeptical Oliver. She's printed out a copy of the tattoo after she'd altered the images on his mothers computer, so she knows for certain how to alter the mark.

Once she's finished talking, or at least while she pauses for breath, Oliver nods. "It's the best chance we have to at least keep Detective Lance from having to acknowledge he recognizes what it is."

It takes very little to accomplish the blurring marks and once the ink is dry, Thea and I come over with the vodka ice pack assembly. Top to bottom, it covers from the back of his neck almost to his waist, side to side there's just too much Oliver and not enough zip bag. Still, it's realistically something you could expect to make from stuff a bar would have and for the moment, that's important.

I look at Sin. "Would you get the other jacket now? We'll need to leave in a few and it can go in the cooler in the trunk, I think?" I look at Diggle who motions for Sin to lead the way.

It only takes another ten minutes before we're on our way. I ride shotgun in the Bentley while Roy drives Thea and Sin in Felicity's Mini. Felicity sits in the back seat of the Bentley with Oliver's head in her lap. I call my dad to tell him we're coming.


	16. Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver's side of the rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Oliver

I'm so proud of my Team. Once again they've managed to keep me alive in spite of my best efforts at being an idiot. I got complacent and sloppy and the bastards took me down in my own garage without getting so much as a single bruise amongst them.

The fact that Mr. Smug was probably League trained mitigates my disgust to an extent, but not much. It's galling to realize that my mother was right. I still need a keeper.

And I'll never be able to tell her how well she chose when she picked Digg for the job. If I'd had the forethought to design exactly the kind of brother-in-arms I would need, I couldn't have done better. Because from the outset I had no idea what my crusade could have cost me without him to keep my head screwed on (mostly) straight.

Because he was right about why I needed him, and him specifically, because there is no way I would have survived even part of that first year without him. If Malcolm hadn't killed me that Christmas, he certainly would have the night of the Undertaking. I only survived those two encounters because Digg had my back.

I'll survive this because of my Team and my Team has survived because of Felicity. She's been my anchor and my guiding light since the moment I brought her that bullet-ridden laptop. I had the first inkling that she was unique when she called me on the latte/bad neighborhood line, but I don't think I could have guessed how truly unusual she is, or how precious she would become.

Until then I'd been used to others, girls especially, who never thought of questioning my lies, no matter how outrageously bad they were. People just seemed to gloss over whatever excuse came out of my mouth because why the rich boy needed a favor never seemed as important as what they could gain from doing the favor. Which never worked with Felicity because why is her favorite question.

Sara gives me her comm so I can talk to Felicity while she talks to her dad.

"What happened?" she asks.

I have to remember that the line is open, just like it would be on any other mission. "Darted me as I came off the elevator in the garage." I'm pretty sure she can hear how disgusted I am with that.

"We need to upgrade the cameras down there," she says, and I can hear her keyboard clacking away in the background.

"They probably used my security pass to screw with what record there was," I say, remembering the hands.

"They very industriously blocked or wiped a lot of the camera feeds with it, which made it hard to track where they took you. Even how they took you."

I can hear how hard that was for her. There's a tension in her voice that isn't there unless I'm actually out in the field. "That was overkill." I say, shaking my head. "I wouldn't have needed to block the feeds, since I know which way all the cameras point."

I can hear that I'm starting to wheeze and I manage to suppress the urge to cough. I don't want her to know about the waterboarding until she can see me.

"Exactly!" she says, approvingly. I can't help feeling like I got the blue ribbon for that answer and it makes me smile. "Wait til I show you the letter they left, supposedly from you, trying to get us not to look for you. It had Sara and I in tears laughing."

At least they made some mistakes in this. "So, you were able to trace them part way..."

"Yep. I was able to pull up the cameras that cover the alley and identify the car they took you away in. I used the traffic cams to follow it to a parking garage where they apparently swapped you into another vehicle."

There's an awkward moment of silence, which makes me wonder what happened to the car. Before I can ask, she tells me.

"We weren't able to get anything useful off the car because one of them drove it off into the river from the Aquarium parking lot. The driver bailed out as it disappeared over the edge, but there was no way to get a clear look at him from the available cameras."

Oh hell. I can imagine how she must have seen it, from her desk in the Foundry, unable to do anything about anything.

"Sara knew it was them dumping the car and the evidence, rather than ... anything else."

Me, for example. I already owed Mr. Smug for his hand in Felicity's abduction, but this! I really hope I have the chance to explain how I feel about his actions. Hands on, as it were. Thank God for Sara.

Sara comes back into the building. "My dad says she's okay. She shot the bastard dead."

"Anyone else hurt?" I ask her, as Digg's phone registers a text. I let the information roll over me as I try to decide if I'm happy that my mother has killed him before I'd had the chance to .. express my displeasure personally. Of course if it comes down to a choice between the two of them, I fully support how his visit turned out.

I think Sara hoped I wouldn't have to talk to her dad about this, but there was never any way that was going to work. Because of the men my mother has employed and their involvement in this debacle, there was always going to have to be some kind of police connection to this mess. Hiding what they did because it touches me would have been the worst thing to do because we've had to invoke the Arrow as an agent in both attacks against me.

First, it would lead to too many questions I don't want to leave unanswered, which could point in turn to an uncomfortably close connection between me and the Arrow. Something I've been doing my best to avoid waving around in public from the start. The fact that I've managed to keep this sleight of hand redirection going this long sometimes amazes me.

At least Mr. Smug is the only fatality. I'll make sure French and Rich get bonuses for their injuries. They'll say they just did their jobs, but I doubt they expected the kind of fallout that comes from working for my family.

I'm grateful Sara put a stop to the idea we would be going to the hospital. I hate hospitals to begin with; too many people going wherever they want because they look like they belong there is just a recipe for disaster as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I know that sounds paranoid, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong about it.

The other part of it is that hospitals tend to keep records. Visual records, frequently. It's one thing to say that I have a lot of scars, it's another to have a record of which ones are where. And when the police can access that record to identify the marks I've acquired since my return, marks I'd have no safe or legal way of explaining, that kind of trumps what benefit there might be in getting professional help for my injuries.

So, yeah, no hospital this time; we'll stay at the mansion instead, at least for tonight. To Felicity I say, "It's the most defensible place we can all stay at once," Looking up at Sara, I add, "Plus it's probably best not to keep dragging your dad out to Verdant. I'd as soon he stop associating it with the Arrow."

"Is Sara there?" Felicity asks me. "Pass me back to her, will you?"

I take the comm out and hand it back to her. "Felicity wants to talk to you."

She takes it and steps back outside. I feel the coughing fit coming again, but not in time to truly suppress it. I stifle it some, but I know it's still there in my chest waiting to catch me off guard.

Digg isn't happy about it, from the way he's looking at me. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to see a doctor about this if I can't sleep it off. At least I should be able to do it at the house instead of the hospital.

While I get my breathing back under control, Digg pulls a pair of sweat pants out of his pack. I'm able to pull them on without falling over, thank God. He hands me a pair of sneakers next and pulls out a hoodie as I put the shoes on. 

He also hands me a bottle of water and I'm reminded of how thirsty I am. In deference to my lungs, I don't guzzle it down, but I don't give it back either. Digg nods.

It takes a few minutes, but I am finally able to stand on my own. I have a lot of ground to make up in terms of my stamina. It was bad enough before the waterboarding and the whip, but these have set me back hard.

Roy moves out to get the Bentley and Sara comes back into the building. She speaks to Sin over the comm before handing it back to me and I grab her hand before she moves away.

"I'm going to collect Sin and we'll meet up back at Verdant," she says.

I take the comm and make eye contact. "I owe that kid," I say and she nods.

"I've already read her the riot act about going off on her own and getting caught. But she's still pissed at you over the boiling water." Sara says.

I look at Sara, incredulous. "As tiny as she is, that much water would have peeled more than a couple layers of skin off her. No way I was willing to allow that." I wouldn't be able to face myself over that.

Sara goes off to collect Sin as Digg and I wait for Roy. I can hear Felicity and Thea talking back at the Foundry, but I'm having a hard time tracking what's going on there. I need to pull myself together before I have to face Detective Lance or I won't be able to keep any of my secrets. I can't remember when I've felt this tired.

Digg has to jog my shoulder to get me to notice that the car is here. Digg's done a great job of bandaging my back, but it's going to be hard riding back to Verdant. If I hadn't been so sure I'd have fallen off, I'd have asked Sara to take me instead of Sin.

I can see that Digg's worried about me, but I don't know how to reassure him. I'm dehydrated in spite of the water, which is bad enough, but I'm also going to need to be careful about what I eat as well as what I drink, since the last thing I remember was a peanut butter sandwich the day I made my break. So, almost three days ago?

The problem with this is that even if I drink enough fluid to bring up the deficit it won't sharpen my wits before I have to see Detective Lance. A two day nap would help too, but I know better than to try putting him off like that. He's too smart not to be suspicious of these continued encounters with the Arrow so I can only hope my physical condition will balance that out.

I get into the back of the Bentley and Digg drives Roy and I back to Verdant. It's a drive that would normally take 10 minutes, but he's being careful not to jostle me, so it takes more than twice as long. I'm grateful for his care, but I'm also conscious of how long it's been since I've seen Felicity.

Roy's down the steps first, fast because he's seen Thea. I'm moving more slowly than usual because those three weeks of enforced inactivity have affected my knees as well as the rest of my body. I'm way more out of shape than I'd first thought.

But once I clear the stairs, she's in my arms. Except for my misguided return to Lian Yu, I haven't gone three days without seeing her since I showed took her that laptop. I'm probably squeezing her harder than I should, but the ants that have been crawling under my skin since I first woke, tied up and away from her, are finally gone.

She's shivering and I know she's close to her breaking point. Into her hair I whisper, "We're bugging everyone's shoes after this. I don't care how much it costs or how long it takes. Every single pair." And the shiver becomes a snicker.

I know that the clock is ticking and that Sara's father is waiting. With my mother, which can't be comfortable for either of them. But I need to hold her, for a little longer, just as much as she needs to be held.

The timer in my head is starting to scream, and I'm not ready to let her go, but we have to leave soon or some enterprising cop is going to come by Verdant and wonder about the two cars still here when the club's been closed for hours. I ease off with a sigh and after a moment more, Felicity looks up at me. And I start to cough.

I can see her alarm, but as much as I fight, I can't control this spasm. I just have to ride it out. Once it's done with me Digg helps me over to the examination table. I can almost hear Felicity's argument about needing the X-ray machine for things like this as well as my ribs.

Digg gets the hoodie off me to check his bandaging in better light. Sara and Thea are doing something behind me that involves duct tape and zip bags. But Felicity is coming in front of me with a sheet of paper and a sharpie marker.

"I was able to blur the Bratva tat on both the videos Detective Lance will have seen from your mother's computer. I think I can duplicate the image over the real thing with the marker. I mean the colors should blend well enough that it won't scream cover-up at a glance."

I'm impressed. I hadn't considered that she could do that with the videos and then repeat the camouflage on me. She's a genius, alright.

"It's the best chance we have to at least keep Detective Lance from having to acknowledge he recognizes what it is." I say, nodding at her.

She smiles and sets to work quickly. She's gentle, and finished before I can squirm and ruin her work. Once its all dry, Thea and Sara bring their contraption over and I realize it's a kind of ice pack jacket. I'm impressed all over again by how much smarter my Team is than I am.

While they're getting me taped into the thing, I meet Diggle's eye over their heads. I suspect that Lance will need to see my skin, which will need to be re-bandaged afterwards, which will also necessitate refilling the first aid kits from the main supply here. He nods and moves off to do that, quickly because he can hear that timer too.

By the time I'm redressed, Digg has come back. Sara sends Sin back upstairs for something and he goes with her. When I get to the car, I can see Thea and Sin with Roy in Felicity's Mini, ready to follow. Sara takes shotgun and I get in the back with Felicity and put my head in her lap.

I must have dozed off during the ride, because I'm aware of coming up to the gates of the estate much sooner than I'd expected. I sit up as we pass through a police checkpoint, followed by the Mini. I'm not at the top of my game yet, but I'll have to be by the time we get up to the house.

Lance, I realize, will not be the main issue tonight. My mother will certainly insist on being present during the interview and she will be a more critical audience than he will. I suspect that if I just have everyone stay, so I don't have to repeat the story, her focus will be more on Thea.

Of course, this may all be for naught. If the man she killed told her I'm the Arrow before she shot him, my secret is out anyway. Lance probably knows already, at least in part because of how the Arrow and the Canary interact.

And isn't it sad that I trust his intentions over my mother's? We get out of the cars at the door and I tell Felicity and Sara. "I want her focus divided amongst us all, rather than just on me."

Sara nods and goes to advise the others. Felicity looks as hard as I've ever seen her, but this is my mother we're talking about and I suspect they've had words over my absence. "She stonewalled you, didn't she?"

Felicity nods, eyes narrowed at the memory. "She granted us an audience, with Walter in attendance. Thea came along and put a bug in one of upstairs phones. She was more interested in what we might know than in adding to it. Then Thea went off on her..."

"I was tired of all her lies," Thea says, taking my hand. "She'd seen the police report and knew what we'd told the police about why Malcolm had attacked you, and she knew it was bogus. I told her the truth, that Malcolm tried to kill you so I'd be alone and unprotected. It spooked her, but she didn't share."

"We couldn't send in the Arrow to scare her," Sara adds, looking over at Digg, "so I went in the night she got the first video of you. She didn't want to deal with me, but seeing that had put her off her game."

I nod. Pressing a kiss to Thea's forehead I release her and she goes back to stand by Roy.

Digg moves back to the car. "I'll take this around and up through the kitchens to your room," gesturing to the trunk.

"Okay," I say. "You might as well join the fun when you're done. I'm sure Lance will have questions for you too."

He looks sour, but he knows it's true. Taking a deep breath, I lead my Team inside. As we clear the door, Felicity's hand tightens on mine.

Raisa's smiling face is the first one I see. I take her hand with my free hand and squeeze it. I can feel the wheeze in my chest wanting to explode and I know the struggle to confine it is showing in my face.

"Perhaps some bottled water would help?" Felicity suggests, looking between Raisa and me. i nod and Raisa smiles again.

"Detective Lance is waiting to speak to you in the library," Raisa tells me, us. "I will bring a tray there."

Felicity smiles at Raisa and adds "He's going to be on smoothies and milkshakes for a day or two. They didn't feed him very well, so he's going to have to work his way up to real food."

Raisa nods as she leaves us at the entrance to the library. My mother moves towards me as we enter, but Felicity blocks her seamlessly as she gets me settled into a chair. Rather than fuss in front of Lance, she simply nods and retreats. Roy pulls up a chair for Thea, and then one for Felicity before going back to stand behind Thea.

Sara and Sin take the rest of the sofa next to her dad and I can see him making some shrewd guesses based on how we're arranged. He has to know that there's something wrong between my mother and I, and I don't know how to do anything about it. Assuming there's anything I could do that wouldn't make things worse.

I put that aside. I can't stop him thinking and I know he knows my mother well enough to know that she keeps secrets better than a squirrel stashes nuts. I just hope he doesn't jump to conclusions about whose secrets she's hiding now.

I sigh and that starts me coughing again, which was not what I'd intended, but it has the effect of focusing Lance's attention on me and not my mother. Raisa appears with the water and once I'm able to get the cough contained, I take a careful drink. Drowning myself is not on the agenda tonight/this morning.

"I guess you have questions," I say, looking at Lance, who makes a face.

"I can wait," he begins and I'm shaking my head.

"Thank you, Detective, but I would really rather get this dealt with now."

He nods, taking out his notebook and his phone. "What happened, then?"

I walk him through what I know, as Felicity adds her piece to fill in the blanks. Roy covers how we got Sin involved without invoking the Canary, though obviously Lance can see she's all but stapled to Sara. Sin gives a carefully worded explanation of her involvement and I'm grateful that she minimizes the boiling water and the amount of trouble I made to get her a free shot out of the plant.

I don't want to go into detail about what happened to me, but I don't want to have to go over this again, so I gloss over the waterboarding. We don't mention Thea and Felicity's visit to my mother either, and I'm hoping that isn't a mistake that will bite me later. Priorities. Deal with one problem at a time.

Lance has questions and we answer them as carefully as if we'd had time to rehearse. Of course, Thea, Sin and Roy may have gone over their stories on the way over. Even Digg and Sara may have coordinated while I slept.

Digg joins us as Lance is clarifying what we'd already told him. When Lance asks him for his story, Digg explains that he was called to come pick me up after the Arrow and the Canary had dealt with the situation. Lance asks each of us if we'd seen what either vigilante looks like and of course we all plead ignorance.

Lance gathers up his things and our eyes meet. I can see the question in his eyes. He doesn't want to ask to see my back, but he has to. He has the videos, but because he's alone, because I've been outside the chain of custody as it were, he needs to see that the video hasn't been tampered with.

Of course, I know it has, so I nod and stand. "If you'll come this way, Detective," I say, as we lead him out to the stairs.

My mother stands and I can see that she's furious. I catch her eye over Lance's head and I can see that she's about to protest. Angrily.

I make a small motion, shaking my head ever so slightly. She freezes, still furious, but now also confused. Looking at Lance I say, "I appreciate your willingness to do this here, Detective."

He looks embarrassed and she subsides, taking my hint. Felicity and Digg follow Lance and I upstairs. I see Thea speaking to Raisa, arranging for guest rooms and food I hope. Lance sees them too.

"Hosting a sleep over?" He asks.

I sort of shrug. "I wanted to be sure that everyone would be safe, at least for tonight, in case the men caught at the plant, and the guy my mother shot, weren't the only ones involved." I glance back at Felicity then down at Thea.

Lance nods, glancing down at Sara and Sin.

"That girl saved my life," I say, quietly.

"Could you have gotten away if they hadn't caught her?" He asks me, voice equally low.

I shake my head. There's a distant chance I could have, but I'll never say it. She's bent enough about the boiling water as it is, I won't add to it with maybes.

"I never saw more than one or two while I was awake, so the number I ran into when I tried to run was a lot more than I'd expected." I tell him and spread my hands palms down. "They didn't seem to expect any resistance," I add as he recognizes the broken skin over my knuckles. "They just sort of swamped me with numbers."

He looks at me and I can see the questions swirling. So I nod back at Digg. "Mr. Diggle decided it would be a good thing for me to have some basic moves after Blood's little impromptu riot."

His questions aren't all gone, but they're muted.

Rather than take him into my room, because I don't want him to see how bare it is, I lead them into the lounge across the hall. I catch Digg's eye and he gets out the small first aid pack and then goes for some more water.

Lance takes out his phone again and says, "I'll need to take pictures of your hands as well, Oliver. I'm sorry."

I shake my head. I don't want any questions about whose DNA they find when it comes to the fight bite samples I may have left behind. The table in the corner has a lamp as well as a white tablecloth, which makes it perfect.

Digg comes back with the water, bowl and bottle. I spread my hands palm down on the tablecloth. Lance is very professional about the photographs, but the thought of that level of scrutiny applied to the rest of me makes me want to squirm.

So. Showtime. I hand the hoodie to Felicity and Digg uses a simple pair of scissors to cut open the front of the duct tape/zip bag vest. I let him slide it off me and he hands it off to Lance.

Lance is impressed with it. "That's a pretty clever idea."

"Sara and Thea put it together," Felicity tells him, as Digg starts to undo the bandaging on my back. "They're one third vodka so they'll stay close to freezing without actually being solid."

I'm sitting backwards in one of the side chairs from the table. I've tried to find an angle that will keep me from having to see anyone's reactions, but the big mirror over the console table reflects the whole room. And when Felicity makes a small whimper, I can't even pretend not to look.

I can see her standing close behind me, so I put out my hand towards her and draw her in front of me. I make eye contact with her and hold her attention as Lance takes his pictures. There are tears in those beautiful blue eyes, but she won't let them fall.

I'd like nothing more than to kiss them away, and the tiny smile she gives me says she knows that. I bring her hand to my lips and kiss it instead. In response, she wraps both of her hands around mine as we wait for Lance to finish.

As if proving my clever Girl Wednesday psychic as well as brilliant, Lance asks me to stand so he can take one more picture from the front. I can only hope that her artwork disguising the tat will stand up to the flash. Knowing how careful she is, I'm pretty sure she has it all worked out.

Digg escorts Lance back downstairs. I still have hold of Felicity's hand and I use it to pull her against me. With a sigh, she leans her head against my chest and we stand that way for a few minutes, just letting the tension of the last few hours drain away.

I hear the footsteps coming up the stairs, but it's not until I hear her gasp that I realize that my mother has joined us. Felicity mutters an obscenity against my chest and I kiss the top of her head. We exchange rueful glances and she nods at me as she helps me into my hoodie.

I'm alright until I sigh as I turn to face my mother. Another wave of coughing sweeps over me and it takes a moment for me to catch my breath again. There's more where that came from, waiting to swamp me again at the least provocation, but I'm holding it at bay for the moment.

I sit back in the chair I'd used for Lance's pictures, but with my back towards the back. Felicity hands me a water bottle and I drink a healthy chunk of it. She looks from my mother to me and I nod, because this is clearly not a conversation I'm going to be able to skip.

"I'll go see what kind of smoothie Raisa and I can concoct for you. I'll be back in a few."

The last part is directed as much at my mother as at me. My mother accepts it with a nod and waits for Felicity to leave. I remind myself that the last three weeks haven't been easy for her either and I wait for her to speak.


	17. Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lights are dawning for Moira.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Moira

Thea and her Roy go off to the kitchen to arrange for food. Ms. Smoak and Mr. Diggle go upstairs with Oliver and Quentin Lance. Oliver clearly does not want me there and I am forced to remain with Sara Lance and her little protege.

If I understand all of what Oliver said and didn't say about this child, she was both responsible for his rescue and for the change in his status as a 'safe' captive. On the one hand, if she had not been caught, or at least not been caught before Oliver had made his escape, Oliver would not have been tortured by his kidnappers. On the other hand, I hate to think how he would have reacted to what might have been done to her once he was out of their reach, because it would have been horrible and it would have put me past forgiveness for my part in it.

And if she hadn't been caught and then been able to escape, who knows how long it might have been before we found Oliver? Malcolm's man, whose name I never knew but whose face I did remember, would have kept him drugged and imprisoned as long as I paid them. Whether torturing my son was always his end game or not, keeping Oliver from his family tortured us, so we owe her a debt.

There is so much I must apologize to Oliver for, beyond this incident. I want my son back and this has to be the first step. He's endured so much because of me and I have to tell him I understand, that I acknowledge my errors.

I manage to keep from pacing until Mr. Diggle walks Quentin Lance back down from upstairs. Sara and the child stand as Quentin comes in. I can see from his face that Quentin is disturbed by what he's seen and it makes my stomach pitch. I can't stay still, stay here, stay away.

I manage to keep my face neutral as I say my goodbyes. Mr. Diggle looks at me strangely; I suspect that his opinion of me is lower even than Thea's by now. Quentin goes to collect his car, to take the girls home and Mr. Diggle goes to stand with them at the front door.

I wait until they are away from the room and head towards the stairs. If I take too long I will miss my chance to talk to him and I can't let that happen. Not again.

As I climb the stairs, I hear Sara say "She was actually civil. I was surprised."

I hear Mr. Diggle make a small snort. "She may be a bitch, but she's not stupid. She knows Sin saved his life."

"If I hadn't gotten caught, he would have gotten away," the girl says, and I can hear the distress in her voice. I want to tell her that she shouldn't feel like that, that the blame for the situation is ultimately mine, but I can't get words past the lump in my throat.

I hear Sara's voice, muffled presumably by the girl's head or shoulder as she says, "Oliver told you that he owed you, right? Because he knew it was hard for you to run and leave him. If you hadn't gotten to us, he would still be there and his mother would be dead. Yes he got hurt, but you know he doesn't think about it that way."

I stop. I can't comprehend how to parse that conversation. I understand that Sara was with Oliver on that island for part of the time, so I have to assume she knows how he got at least some of the scars he came home with. But how would this child have any idea how Oliver deals with injury?

And aside from that, who is this 'us' Sara speaks of? I'm suddenly afraid that I know. I'm afraid of what I've begun to think.

I need to see my son. I need to talk to my son. My Oliver.

I take a deep breath and climb the stairs to the second floor. The first thing I see is Oliver's back and I can't swallow the gasp or the sob that it causes. The look in his eyes as he turns to look at me reminds me of the way he looked that first night home, when he nearly strangled me before he was fully awake.

He is so tired. I see it so clearly now when I couldn't while he spoke downstairs. His Felicity is with him and the look on her face when she sees me is as cold I would expect, given my past behavior. But it melts as she looks up at Oliver.

He kisses her on the head and she helps him into his jacket. I hadn't fully appreciated how big Oliver is before seeing him like this. In comparison to her he's not simply taller, he's much bigger ... much bulkier than I'd realized, more muscular.

This realization makes me even more anxious. I don't want to consider what's battering at the back of my mind. That can't be the answer. It simply cannot.

And then he starts to cough. Robert had pneumonia soon after we married and he didn't sound that bad. I wish now that I hadn't simply shot that bastard once. He deserved a lot more pain for what he, and his master, have done to my son.

Felicity says something about a smoothie and goes down the stairs. I nod at her as she goes past me. My throat is tight but I need to find the words I need to reach my son.

"I'm so sorry!" Because there is no other place to begin. "For so much, I barely know where to begin."

Oliver inhales as if to speak, but I raise my hands. "Please let me get this out before I lose my nerve. I know that I've hurt you, that things I have done. Things I should never have done. I thought I was doing them to keep you and Thea safe, but that isn't really true. Not wholly true."

I take a deep breath to gather myself and start again. "I didn't know about what Malcolm was planning until the day before you and your father sailed. He'd told your father and Robert told me that night. It sounded like some science-fiction movie plot when he said it and I simply couldn't wrap my mind around the idea it might be real."

I can't do this standing still, so I pace. Oliver is quiet and watchful. It's his CEO meeting face so I don't know what he's really thinking.

"It was several months after the Gambit had been declared lost, you and Robert legally declared dead," My voice falters as I think of what he must have been enduring when I'd stopped even hoping either of them might be returned to me. "Malcolm waited patiently before telling me that he'd had the Gambit sabotaged. And why."

I see Oliver make a fist and I remember the look in his eye as he turned from me the night of the Undertaking. And I clearly see the bruises and open cuts on his face in a way I didn't, couldn't that night. The light dawns, after far too long.

"That's why he moved up the timing. You'd already tried to thwart him. He knew you wouldn't stop until you'd defeated him." Or until he killed you, my mind continues, though I can't bear to think it let alone say it out loud.

Oliver's face blanks. I can't tell if it's because the thought hadn't ever occurred to him that way, or if it's because he doesn't know how to deal with the idea that I know his secret. I shouldn't be doing this now, I realize, not while he's in so much pain.

I come to stand in front of him and cup his face in my hands. "We can talk later, if you want. I just wanted to say how sorry I was for hurting you. In so many ways, for so long. Before anything else, Oliver, you are my son and I love you. I am so glad that you and your Felicity are together, that she so clearly makes you happy."

I press a kiss to his forehead and go up to my room.


	18. Eighteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver, after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Oliver

I really didn't want to listen to my mother. I was expecting nothing more from her than excuses and self-justification but she surprised me. Now, I'm sitting here, stunned and amazed, when Diggle and Felicity come back up.

"And that, Ms. Smoak, is the picture definition of the term 'pole axed'," Digg is trying to relieve her anxiety, but since all I do in response is nod, it's not working.

"What did she say?" Felicity asks, sharply. "What did she do?"

She's approaching Loud Voice volume, so I reach out and take her hand. I'm not sure what to say because now I'm less sure what actually happened here. I sigh and then I start coughing again. Of course.

And that's getting old. Real fast. My chest hurts inside and out.

Digg and Felicity are both looking at me like they're judging how hard I'll make it if they called an ambulance on me. I'm doing my best to look tough, but it's hard while I'm wheezing. "Not going anywhere tonight," I tell then, as soon as I can speak. "How do I explain all the other scars from the last two years? It's not like we can declare another 'motorcycle accident' without having damaged the Ducati. Somebody, like Lance's bosses, will notice that most of the unrecorded scars look a lot like recent bullet wounds and knife cuts. I'd really rather not risk it."

Felicity huffs in annoyance and I feel my shoulders relax. I hate hospitals for so many reasons and the record of my scars is only a part of it. No computer record can withstand the might of Felicity Smoak, but she can't change what the doctor sees and remembers.

"So, what did she want?" Digg asks, helping me slip the hoodie back off.

"She started off by apologizing." Which gets me raised eyebrows from both of them.

"For anything specific?" Digg pushes.

"Not at the beginning." I look over a Felicity, who is sitting in the other side chair not watching Digg re-bandage my back. "She said that she was sorry for hurting me and that she was glad we were together."

Felicity's eyes widened at that. "That's the last thing I would have expected. Given how much she dislikes me."

"I know. It was weird because she was very agitated at the start, talking about when Malcolm told her about sabotaging the Gambit. Then she stopped and stared at me for a moment, then talked about Malcolm moving up the Undertaking." I pause for a moment because it was the look on her face then that convinced me.

"I don't understand," Felicity says, frowning. "Why was that so important?"

"Before I left the house that night, I asked her again to tell me where he was keeping the device. I was there when he called to tell her about the change in plan. I'd been pushing her to come clean, but when he upped the timetable I knew I couldn't waste any more time on convincing her, which is when I came back to the foundry."

"Knew that," Felicity reminds me, head cocked.

"I think that tonight she connected the dots. I'd told her at the beginning of our conversation that I'd talked to Malcolm already. And when I left, I told her that somebody in the family had to put a stop to it all, as one last dig to try to get her to talk to me. But she held her press conference instead."

Felicity shakes her head, frowning. "I still don't see..."

"He means that she knows," Digg tells her, looking at me for confirmation.

I nod. "I think all the pieces just aligned for her tonight. I think it was Sara's ... visit and the fact that we couldn't explain away Sin's involvement in this without tipping Lance into a similar epiphany. Which would have been an even bigger problem."

Felicity winces, but Digg just nods. I have to think he's expected this since Raisa admitted she'd tumbled to me. My mother isn't stupid and it was inevitable that she would reach a point where she was forced to recognize what she's been ignoring about me.

"So what do we do?" Felicity asks.

I sort of shrug. "Nothing tonight. I may pay her a pointed visit tomorrow or the next day to see if I can convince her I'm two different people, but I need to be sure there's a way to do it without accidentally doing the opposite."

Digg snorts. "Coughing through the modulator will still sound like coughing."

"My point."

Felicity isn't happy about me suiting up. In part because the Hood's first encounter with my mother is how she wound up part of the team, but I don't think my mother will shoot me this time. Whether she'll believe I'm not the Arrow is another question.

Digg hands me a stainless water bottle. "I gave Raisa a handful of your herbs and she made this out of them. If you're still coughing by morning, we're going to get you a doctor, so take your medicine."

"They worked the last time," I say, not thinking.

"What last time?" Felicity asks and I realize what I've said.

"I had pneumonia on the island." I hope she'll let it lie because I'm not up to that discussion right now. The look she gives me lets me know I've been reprieved buy not released. There will be a discussion.

The moment passes as Thea and Roy come up the stairs with trays of food. I know I shouldn't be thinking of solid food yet, at least not until I see how my stomach reacts to the tea, never mind the smoothie Raisa sent up. Still, everything smells delicious.

"Everyone was gone when we got back from the kitchen," Thea says, eyeing me over her plate. "She came up here, didn't she? Tried to apologize?" She sighs and puts down the sandwich. "I almost sent Roy by himself so I could stay in there but I didn't think Sara would leave without saying goodbye."

"Yes, she came up," I say, with a sort of shrug. "I'm not sure what triggered it, but I'm pretty sure she's figured it out."

Thea's eyes widen and she looks from me to Digg to Felicity. She mimes drawing a bow and we nod. "O. M. F. G."

Felicity's eyes darken as she nods again. I knew my mother had tried to stonewall them; it's how she deals with people: deny, deny, deny. Felicity and Thea share a look that tells me there's still bad feelings there.

Conversation drifts into less fraught subjects until the food is gone. Digg and Roy take the trays back to the kitchen. With a squeeze of my hand, Felicity stands and goes into my room, leaving me with my sister.

Thea takes my hand, squeezing it tightly. I can tell from the tension in her shoulders that she's carrying a weight. "Let it out, Speedy."

It takes a moment, but when she speaks her voice is soft enough she could almost be talking to herself. "When they said it was because of Malcolm, Roy kinda freaked. Felicity told him he'd done just what you'd asked him to do, that you wouldn't blame him for any of it..."

I squeeze back and she looks up at me. "Felicity was right. He did exactly what I asked of him and he kept you safe. That smug bastard was playing with your heads. Neither of you was responsible for this."

"I thought we'd lost you," Thea says, tears gathering in her eyes. "I was so afraid."

I stand and pull her up so I can hug her. She sniffles into my chest a little before standing back. "Don't do this again, okay?"

I kiss the top of her head and we part for the night.


	19. Nineteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the last: Oliver's bluff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Record: These Characters Do Not Belong To Me, BUT THE WORDS I'VE STRUNG TOGETHER HERE ARE ABSOLUTELY MINE AND MINE ALONE. Touch at your peril.

Oliver

Thea and Roy stay the night, but they're gone before lunch. I may be softening towards our mother, but Thea has a lot more anger to work through and I certainly can't blame her for wanting out as soon as she can. Sara says her father is convinced there are no more strays, so I'm trusting Roy to watch Thea. Felicity claims that's a first, but it's not.

We decide to have a doctor come out to look at me. By which I mean that Felicity called the man my mother recommend and pointed out how it would help bolster my charade if it seemed I was sicker than I am. The fact that her point was valid didn't make it any easier to deal with, but at least it was over fairly quickly.

He left us with prescriptions and advice, both of which I should probably take, but I know me better. I could see Felicity meet Digg's look over the poor man's head as he prescribed a week's bed rest minimum. Yeah, no, not happening. Followed by a gradual resumption of normal activity. Right. Sparring day after tomorrow, or at least working with one of the dummies. Because one day in bed is three days conditioning lost and I can't afford that on top of everything else.

Digg shows him downstairs but doesn't attempt to interfere when my mother questions the man. In a way, that opportunity is the whole reason for calling on a doctor in the first place. Since he repeats what he'd told us, it should work.

The tea Raisa made from my herbs is making it easier to suppress the coughing spasms. I'm not sure what she's done, but whatever she's added makes drinking it less disgusting, almost pleasant. One more thing to thank her for.

Digg comes back to my room and confirms that my mother talked with the doctor before he left. I have to wonder what she thinks of his judgement. Will she believe I need to be confined to bed for a week?

I'll go crazy if I'm trapped in this room for that long. I can probably stand it for another day, but beyond that, we'll have to go back to Felicity's place so I can go out to the lair without having to worry about my mother popping into my room to check on me. The fact that I'll have to stay away from QC for the same amount of time is pure bonus.

"So, you're still planning to talk to your mother tonight."

I can hear the disapproval in Digg's voice and I nod.

"She's seen my injuries and she knows the condition I'm in. What she doesn't know is that I've dealt with worse. I have the best chance to convince her that the Arrow is a separate person while what she's seen is still fresh in her mind."

Felicity looks at me, cups my cheek in her hand. "We'll do it your way, if that's what you want, Oliver. But think, is it so bad that your mother knows your secret?"

I can't help it. I sigh and stand up. Because yeah, I'd like to be able to be honest with my family at least. "I can't trust her," I say and rake my hand though my hair in frustration. "It isn't just my life at stake here. There's both of you. There's Sara and Sin, Thea and Roy." I look at both of them. "If I admit my identity, she links the chain all the way along. She's running for mayor now, so she has to behave. But then what? Win or lose she has a hold over me forever after. Especially because she knows about all of us."

Digg sighs and nods. "I'll get the suit and be back in an hour or so. I may as well get more herbs while I'm there."

I nod back. "Gotta figure out whatever Raisa's doing with that tea. It's almost tolerable, which is not something I ever expected to say about them."

"Amen on that!" Digg says. "I'll check on French while I'm out."

I sigh again. "Make sure he gets anything he needs, right?"

"Already done, boss!"

Digg leaves. I circle the room once more before joining Felicity on the window seat. I pull her into my lap and proceed to kiss her senseless.

It takes less time than I like before I have to stop. I'd very much like for us to catch up on what Mr. Smug stole from us but this isn't the place, because when I make her scream I don't want 16 people rushing to her rescue. And because, galling as it is to admit, I wouldn't be at my best tonight and she deserves no less for the hell she's been put through.

She sighs as if she can read my mind. She nestles herself against me as I keep her wrapped in my arms. I've missed this so much, this simple contact. Just to be able to hold her and sit with her with nothing exploding around us. It never lasts for long so I cherish it when we have the time.

Digg finds us like that when he comes back. She's fallen asleep in my arms, which tells me she hasn't slept well alone. I can tell from Digg's face that he's been worried about her. We have a little time before I have to perform, so I'm content to leave her be for as long as I can.

He looks at the bag with my bow and my leathers. "You really think you can convince her?" He keeps his voice low, but it can hear his concerns.

"I have to try," I say. "I can't trust her. She can keep a secret when it suits her, but like she did with the Undertaking, her focus can be too narrow. If she'd been more interested in stopping Malcolm instead of just protecting her family, we might have saved the staff at Unidac as well as stopped the earthquake."

Digg nods. Stop the machines from being built, or at least brought into the city and there's more than 500 people who don't die. Including Tommy.

"I've wondered since," I find myself saying, "if I'd told her my secret, told her the truth, would she have helped stop Malcolm or would I have found myself in Walter's old cell?"

"Which is why you're pushing yourself tonight." Digg nods, understanding. Sometimes I think my family isn't simply twisted. We put corkscrews to shame.

Felicity stirs in my arms and mutters something about camera feeds. I can't help smiling at the cross tone of voice as she complains about angles, then I realize she's back at the beginning, trying to track me. I kiss the top of her head as I shift her so she can see my face and I hers before I actually wake her.

She comes out of sleep slowly. Something I'm grateful for as much as I envy it. I never want her to have to learn to come awake all at once, the way I do. The way I've had to.

She helps me suit up, like she usually does. I can tell she's unhappy about it, even as she understands my reasons. I'm less than thrilled to be doing this myself, but it's our best shot.

Felicity has carefully doctored the security camera feeds so I can leave the house without being seen. I come around the garage area and climb up to my mother's window using one of my grappling arrows. I'm doing my best to keep to the shadows, but the men watching the cameras tonight are likely to be extra jumpy about intruders.

Once I open French doors off her balcony I have maybe 10 minutes at best. I'll need to be seen to come out of my room once the commotion starts, or there's no point in doing this. Which means that I have a very small window to make this work. Getting shot by one of our security people is not on the agenda for tonight.

I kick open the doors and shoot out the light next to her bed. It gives me darkness and menace without needing to say a word. My mother sits upright in her bed, looking ... unimpressed. Not what I was hoping for. Step it up or you'll lose her.

"You've managed to escape the consequences of your crimes yet again, Mrs. Queen."

Her eyes widen and I see a whisper of doubt begin to cross her face. Good.

"Your lies have cost you both your children and very nearly your life. Malcolm Merlyn is out of the picture, but clearly not all of his men were caught that first time."

Her face shutters. There's speculation but also pain. I don't like doing this, but I have to persevere.

"Be honest. Stay honest. Your campaign is a good start at making amends to the city. Keep your nose clean and I won't have to keep reminding you that I'm watching you."

I move back towards the balcony. I have 2, maybe 3, minutes before someone bursts into the room from the hall or up from the garden. I get two steps and she's getting out of the bed. I fire an arrow into the pillow next to her.

"Stay where you are, Mrs. Queen." I say, continuing to move.

"Wait, please!"

"So you or your security people can shoot me? I don't think so. Once was more than enough."

"Please! I didn't know!"

Damn. Need to step it up and get out.

"You knew exactly what I was asking about, that night!" I shout back. "If you'd had the guts to defy Merlyn back then, the 503 would have survived. The only reason you're still breathing is because, of all his conspirators, you're the only one who made even a feeble attempt to stop the earthquake. Don't make me regret my leniency."

Her mouth hangs open. The door flies open and I fire at the light switch next to the jamb. Digg is the first thru the door and the sparks make him flinch. It also draws her attention away from me as I vault the balcony railing. I get to the garage and back into the house in a little over 2 minutes.

I meet Felicity back in my room about 90 seconds after that. It takes another couple of minutes before I'm out of my leathers and the bow and quiver tucked under the bed. She hands me my robe as I pull on my sweats.

I'm out in the hall when all the running takes it's toll on my lungs. I can hear my mother arguing with Digg as one of her police detail brushes past me. She pushes past them towards me as they're arguing with her about leaving her room.

"If he'd wanted me dead, he had ample opportunity before anyone arrived," she's saying.

"Oliver! What's wrong?"

I'm bent over, trying to get my breathing under control. "I was going to ask you the same thing," I gasp. I'm able to straighten up and she's there looking at me, puzzled.

Shaking her head she says, "I've been visited by the Arrow." She looks back at her room and shivers. "Apparently he bears me some ill will for the time I shot him."

The cop comes up and says, "You should not stay here tonight, Mrs. Queen."

She looks at him and he wilts a little. "You expect him to return?"

"To be fair," I say, "I don't think anyone expected him at all, especially tonight. I mean, he's a psycho, but I wouldn't have thought he was stupid."

"He's saved your life more than once," she says, looking at me with her head cocked.

I shrug, and wince. "That doesn't mean I understand why he does things."

She looks at Felicity who's watching me and frowning. "I'd feel better if we were at home," Felicity says to me. I look over at Digg, who shrugs, looking back at me.

I turn to Felicity and take her hands. I know she doesn't want to be here with my mother, but we'd have to leave the suit and my weapons if we leave now. I sigh and it stars me coughing again.

Digg nods once and helps me back to my room. Felicity follows, hovering. "I'll see if Raisa has more of that tea for you," Digg says, leaving me at the door as Felicity helps me inside.

In the hall, I hear my mother saying she'll stay in her own house, thank you. As Felicity closes the door, I can hear the cop still trying to convince her to leave. I doubt he'll have much luck.

Felicity comes up and stands in front of me. I can tell she's not happy with me. I take her hands in mine and kiss the backs of both of them.

"I didn't think I'd be this affected by the run," I say, looking up at her. "I'm sorry if I scared you."

"I know," she whispers. "I just wish... I just wish you didn't have to keep hurting yourself. I know it seems to have worked, but ..."

I pull her into my lap, into my arms. "It will pass soon," I whisper into her hair. "I promise to be more careful."

Felicity makes a noise something between a wet sniffle and a snicker. "For tomorrow maybe, and maybe even the day after. I know you. As soon as this stops being a problem you'll be hurling yourself into situations right and left."

Okay, true. I was simply thinking of being more aware of where and how hard I hurl myself in future. The idea of not hurling myself at all was nowhere in my mind, which she knows.

I can't stop this yet. We're making progress, but it's not enough. I have to believe that I have survived everything I have for a reason beyond being too stubborn to die.

She believes in me. That I have a purpose, a positive purpose, in this world. I'm slowly beginning to believe that she could be right.


End file.
